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Board of 
Education 

THE CITY OF NEW YORK 



Industrial 
Conference 



Washington Irving High School 
J\ine 2 9. 1914 



DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION— THE CITY OF NEW YORK 



Industrial Conference 



Presiding Officer 

His Honor, The Mayor of The City of New York 

John Ptjrroy Mitchel 



President, Board of Education 
Thomas W. Churchill 



Committee on Vocational Schools and Industrial Training 

Mrs. Ella W. Kramer, Chairman 
Joseph Barondess Isadore M. Levy 

Ernest F. Eilert John Martin 

Abraham Flexner John Whalen 



Washington Irving High School 
Monday, June 29, 1914, 8 p. m. 



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ADDRESSES 

PAGE 

Hon. Thomas W. Chuechill 7 

President, Board of Education 

Hon. John Purroy Mitchel 9 

The Mayor of The City of New York 

Mr. Charles A. Prosser 13 

Of the National Commission on Vocational Education 

Dr. Gustave Straubenmuller 31 

Associate Superintendent of Schools, The City of New York 

Hon. William A. Prendergast 39 

Comptroller of The City of New York 

Mr. H. E. Miles 41 

President of the Wisconsin State Board of Industrial Education 

Mr. William Wirt .51 

Superintendent of Schools, Gary, Indiana 



Resolution Adopted by Board of Education on 
June 24, 1914 

Resolved, That the President be, and he is hereby, authorized 
to invite, on behalf of the Board of Education, speakers and others 
interested in industrial education to attend a conference on that 
subject to be held at the Washington Irving High School on Monday, 
June 29, 1914, at 8 o'clock p. m., and to make any and all such 
arrangements in regard to said conference as, in his judgment, may 
be necessary. 



Program 



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Program 



7. SELECTION 

(a) "Valse Lente" 

(b) "Pizzicatti" Delibes 



8. ADDRESS .... Gttstave Straubenmtjller 

Associate Superintendent of Schools, The City of New York 



9. SELECTION— "Andante Cantabile" . . Tschaikowsky 



10. ADDRESS H. E. Miles 

President, Wisconsin State Board of Industrial Education 



11. ADDRESS , William Wirt 

Superintendent of Schools, Gary, Indiana 



12. MARCHE MILITAIRE Schubert 



Orchestra of the De Witt Clinton High School 
Joseph P. Donnelly, Director 



Industrial Conference 
Washington Irving High School 

June 29, 1914 

Hon. Thomas W. Chuechill, President of the Board of 
Education, addressed the meeting as follows: 

Ladies and Gentlemen: In opening this conference my function 
is a simple one — to announce the purpose of the meeting, to extend 
on behalf of the Board of Education a welcome to the distinguished 
speakers and the no less distinguished audience, and to introduce to 
you the eminent official who has consented to preside. 

Vocational instruction is the most ancient form of education. 
The first naked savage who guided the trembling hand of his off- 
spring to bend the bow was conducting a system of industrial 
instruction, admirably adapted to the child's own future calling. 
Every time and every nation has thus evoked its own system of 
instructing its youth to find their place in the life of the time; 
a place where they might render service and earn that reward that 
would keep mind and body fit for further service. 

Civilization and letters have preserved for us the splendid heri- 
tage of the past, but they have preserved with it something of 
tradition that belongs to the past. What may have been useful 
in one age may yet survive long after its usefulness has ended. 

If, then, we seek a fuller recognition of the needs of the prac- 
tical life, it is only that the schools may continue their world-age 
function of preparing for that life. Education, it is true, must 
include the knowledge of the past ; not less truly must it recognize 
the needs of the present. 

In a democracy like ours, education cannot be dominated by 
an ideal that considers only the limited number that need not work 
with the labor of their hands or the sweat of their brow. In mak- 
ing provision for the extension of vocational education, therefore, 
we are but bringing back our educational forces to the exercise 
of their normal function. 

As to how this may best be done the Board of Education seeks 
to learn from all men and from every place. It wants light, more 
light, and it is for this reason that it has asked for information 
and for counsel from all who may give it. 

Recently a number of gentlemen, interested in this question, 
visited the cities of the west where many interesting and illumi- 



nating experiments are being tried out. The Mayor of the City 
himself headed this group of visitors. 

It is a significant tribute to the importance of this great prob- 
lem that the Mayor could find time personally to visit these schools ; 
it is no less significant of his sympathy with the movement and 
his wide vision of its possibilities. 

Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, it is with peculiar fitness that 
I have at this time the pleasure to introduce as the presiding officer 
of this conference, His Honor, the Mayor of The City of New York. 



Hon. John Purroy Mitchel, Mayor of The City of New 
York, addressed the meeting as follows: 

Ladies and Gentlemen : We are met here to-night to consider 
the most effective way of rendering the people of this City a fun- 
damental social service. We are here, as President Churchill has 
said, to devise plans for extending in this City industrial educa- 
tion — vocational education. I take it that we will all admit that 
the school exists to fit the boys and girls of the community to take 
their places effectively and successfully in the community life. 

If that be true, it follows that the school fails of its purpose 
and object if it fails to equip the boys and girls of the community 
to take that place and to earn for themselves a sufficient livelihood 
— if it fails to prepare them to take that place and then to go for- 
ward in the community life to whatever station their special apti- 
tudes may permit them to rise. 

We have been coming to the view in New York that the schools 
as we have them now — the school system as it exists today — lacks 
something of the effectiveness that it ought to have to equip prop- 
erly for the community life. To quote once more the figures that 
most of us probably know, but that it is well for us all to remem- 
ber, the school mortality in this City: We know, for instance, 
that in 1912-13 there were in the public schools of the city 661,000 
children ; that in the second year there were 86,000 children — 
that is in the second year grade; that at graduation in the ele- 
mentary schools there were left but 48,000 ; that of those but 
23,000 entered the high schools, and in the last or fourth year of 
the high schools there remain but 4,079 children. The rest dropped 
out somewhere on their way through the school system. 

Now, were those boys and girls properly prepared by the schools 
of this City to take their places in the community life of this City? 
'Were they equipped to earn their own livelihood and to advance 
themselves through their own efforts to whatever places their capa- 
cities would naturally permit them to rise? I think the answer 
must undoubtedly be no, for many of them dropped out before 
reaching the last year in the elementary schools and they could 
not have been equipped to take their places effectively in the 
community. 

We want to have those boys and girls whose economic condition 
at home makes it necessary for them to leave the schools before 
they reach the last year go out equipped, as soon as they must go 
out, to take their places in industry, or in business, as the case 
may be, into which they naturally gravitate. In other words, we 
wish to extend, I cannot say establish for it has been established 
and begun, prevocational training in the schools of this City in 
order that those boys and girls when they do go out may have 

9 



some of the things necessary to take their places effectively in in- 
dustry and business. 

There are several things which we can do, it seems to me, and 
a good many more probably which we can do, or, which we will 
learn that we can do when we study this problem carefully and 
fully as we have begun to do. 

We could increase the number of day trade schools, that is one 
thing. We can increase the prevocational classes in the elementary 
schools. We can establish here, I trust, what has been established 
so successfully already in Cincinnati — a close cooperation between 
industry on the one hand and the schools on the other under a 
plan that permits the pupils there, it is true, in the college courses 
in the engineering school (there is no reason why it cannot be 
done in the high schools and probably in the upper classes of the 
elementary schools) to spend part of their time in the shops and 
factories of industry and part of their time in the classroom re- 
ceiving theoretical and cultural education. 

There is no reason, it seems to me, why we cannot establish 
that plan in New York City and get the benefit of the equipment 
of industry — the training of its artisans — combined with the capa- 
city for cultural instruction of the teachers in our schools. Then 
perhaps too, T for one believe that we can establish something of 
that splendid system of distribution of the pupils in the classes 
and have the combination which Mr. Wirt has already so success- 
fully established in Gary. 

Those things we can do, and we are here tonight to consider 
other means and methods — those and others — that we can adopt in 
order to extend this system of industrial education in the City. 
And in making our plans, in formulating our program, we must 
recollect that, if we are to be successful, it must be upon a basis 
of cooperation between industry and the schools, cooperation that 
will be intimate and sympathetic, because without cooperation that 
means the help of those who are engaged in industry, we cannot es- 
tablish, in my judgment, an effective plan. 

We have got to understand the conditions that prevail in in- 
dustry and business in order that we may devise a plan that will 
meet those conditions. We have got to understand the conditions 
that prevail in industry, and we have got to avail ourselves of the 
skilled artisans that industry provides in order to secure for what- 
ever system we may establish skilled instructors, because it is not 
enough to get those who are able to pass examinations in cultural 
subjects. 

We have got to have, if Ave want efficient teachers in these sub- 
jects, the men who have been trained in the shop and in the factory. 
So I say we must have that sympathetic and active cooperation 
between industry and the schools, and we are trying now to devise 
the ways and means of establishing that cooperation. 

Now it is my function merely to preside and to introduce to 
you those who are competent to discuss these questions in detail. 

10 



I shall not trespass any longer on your time. I have the honor 
of introducing to you first Mr. Charles A. Prosser, formerly As- 
sistant Commissioner of Education of Massachusetts. Mr. Prosser 
was selected by President AVilson as a member of the United States 
Industrial National Commission on Vocational Education and his 
Committee has already submitted to Congress a report outlining 
a plan for the extension of that education. Mr. Prosser is also 
Secretary of the National Association for the Promotion of In- 
dustrial Education and has had a direct part in preparing legis- 
lation in many states on the subject of industrial education. I 
have the honor of presenting Mr. Prosser. 



11 



Mr. Chas. A. Prosser, Secretary op the National Society 
for the Promotion of Industrial Education and a member of 
the National Commission on Vocational Education, addressed 
the meeting as follows: 

"If to do were as easy as to know what it were good to do, 
chapels had been churches and poor men's cottages princes' pal- 
aces." If to give New York City a good system of vocational 
education, meeting the rights and needs of all her workers, were 
as easy as to agree that it should be done, a splendid structure of 
practical education would grow up in the New York public school 
system like the palace of Aladdin of old. 

Unfortunately, the task is not to be accomplished either by 
wishes or by magic. Institutions do not come to fruition by such 
easy methods in real life. When the "tumult and the shouting 
dies" in this nation-wide campaign for practical training, when 
the promoters and the agitators depart, we will find ourselves still 
facing the very serious task of developing and perfecting a system 
of vocational education, and facing in that task the most difficult 
problem in all the history of education. 

The movement for vocational training is on us today faster 
than we have teachers to do the work, faster than we have a knowl- 
edge of the industries, faster than we have gained any experience 
in dealing with the problem on this side of the water. The City 
of New York, of all cities in the world, has the most unique task 
in serving the interests of all her workers, unique in size, unique 
in complex conditions, unique in the difficulties to be met. 

The Board of Education of this City, many and difficult as 
have been the problems confronting it in the past, today faces 
what I think is the hardest of them all. It is prophetic of the 
future success of the work in this City that conferences of this 
kind are being called and are yet to be called for the purpose of 
discussing the question and of securing aid from every source in 
dealing with it. 

As a prelude to the swelling theme of the evening, I have been 
asked to state my convictions as to what ought to be done. It 
would be unfair not to pause at the very outset to commend the 
interest which the Board of Education has shown. The Board is 
being impelled from within and from without; impelled from 
within because of its growing feeling that a democratic system 
of education for New York City requires the training of all kinds 
of men in all kinds of ways for all kinds of things ; and impelled 
from without by a growing public sentiment in the city keeping 
step with that of the rest of the country. Vocational training has 
laid hold of the imagination of the people as no other program in 
education has ever done. 

13 



It would be unfair, too, not to commend the splendid begin- 
nings which have already been made. There are here and there 
throughout the City of New York interesting and praiseworthy 
experiments in free vocational education bearing rich promise for 
the future. You have a system of technical high schools in New 
York that will bear comparison with the best in the country. The 
Manhattan Trade School for Girls is as well known as any other 
school in America. Commendable beginnings have been made in 
the general continuation classes in department stores. The Board 
of Education has already begun to cooperate with private ventures, 
like that of the printers at the Hudson Guild. Some of the very 
best evening school courses are those that analyze industry, that 
find out the needs of the workers, that group men according to 
their needs and give them the next thing they need as the next step 
forward in their callings. 

Last year, your evening school in applied design probably broke 
all records for continued persistent attendance on the part of its 
students, a sure sign that the class was meeting their needs. The 
truth is the City is so large and so many big things are being done 
here constantly that many worthy things carried on by teachers 
within the school system are almost unnoticed, unheralded and 
unsung, which, if they were being carried on in a smaller place, 
would be blazoned forth as great contributions to education. 

When the friends of vocational education urge the development 
of vocational education for New York, they are asking for the ex- 
tension of work already begun, for the proper organization, the 
proper support of the movement on a larger scale in order that 
the interests of a greater number may be served. 

There is more vocational education being given in New York 
City than any other municipality in the country and there ought 
to be, because the City is much larger than any other centre of 
population under our flag. Comparatively speaking, however, New 
York has scarcely kept step with the tremendous onward sweep 
of this movement. The very practical and vital issues which are 
at the present time facing the school authorities are such as these : 
Knowing that the City must greatly extend this movement, will 
it provide the funds, is it properly organized to carry on the work, 
has it yet begun the experiments that need to be made, has it as yet 
established the different types of schools needed, has it as yet set 
up the proper cooperation with commerce and industry, does it 
have its face set in the right direction in dealing with the question ? 

In what I have to say by way of suggestion tonight, I speak 
purely as a private citizen of this community. There are four 
things which I think need to be emphasized. What shall New York 
City do in a progressive scheme of vocational education ? 

First: New York City must set up within her public school 
system a distinctive management and separate organization under 
the Board of Superintendents for carrying on this work. 

Second : New York City must search out and train all the dif- 

14 



ferent kinds and groups of people needing trade preparation for 
their life work. A system of vocational education for this City 
must be broader and more comprehensive than the ideas of any 
one thinker or the pet plan or scheme of a particular group of 
persons. Those in charge of the work must keep in mind the in- 
terests and needs of all groups and provide in time the many kinds 
of schools necessary to serve them. 

Third : New York City must increasingly demand that a large 
share of the trouble, expense and responsibility of carrying on 
practical education shall be met by the industries and the voca- 
tions themselves. In ancient days, master and journeyman assumed 
the joint responsibility for the young workers in the craft. The 
schools of New York cannot solve this problem alone. They must 
have the help of commerce and industry, and we must bring home 
to commerce and industry a renewed sense of responsibility for 
the integrity and efficiency of their workers whether employed in 
the countinghouse, the shop or the factory. 

Fourth: New York City must carry vocational education to 
the worker in attractive and convenient ways. He will never come 
to it otherwise. 

A Distinctive Management 

New York City must have a distinctive management; a sepa- 
rate and distinct organization within the public schools to handle 
vocational education. It seems obvious to those who have been in 
the work that vocational education cannot be carried on by the 
schoolmaster alone, nor by the manufacturer alone, nor by the 
trade unionist alone. It requires the union of all three. 

Vocational education has for its controlling purpose the prep- 
aration of young persons for useful employment. This means 
fitting them to meet the requirements of specific occupations. If 
the schools are to prepare people for the machine shop or the print 
shop or the clothing trade or the textile mill, or the electric shop 
or the counting room, there are three things we must know. We 
must know what to teach in order to fit the worker to meet the 
demands of his vocation, we must know how to teach it, we must 
know when to teach it. 

The cooperation of the educator and the practical man is nec- 
essary in dealing successfully with these three problems. The 
trade worker must furnish the practical information about the 
processes and requirements of his calling; but the trained edu- 
cator must have a large part in the organization of this material 
into a progressive course of instruction by the school, even when 
the school is operated by private agencies. 

A scheme of industrial training operated by the trade alone 
without any help from the educational experts in the making of 
courses of study and in the problems of teaching, would be just 
as certain to be unsuccessful in giving the worker proper class- 

15 



room instruction as a system of vocational education operated by 
the schoolmaster alone would be certain to fail in fitting the worker 
for the practical demands and opportunities of his calling. 

A great many people with their eyes fastened on the shortcom- 
ings of the American schools are crying out that the schools are 
inefficient. I believe this is true of some schools; but I do not 
believe that the schools of today are on the whole a bit more ineffi- 
cient than modern industry. There are not wanting those who, 
looking at the failures of the schools to provide a practical edu- 
cation and their lack of practical contact with life and its voca- 
tions, are advocating what has been called for want of a better 
name, dual control for vocational education. 

Dual control in vocational education means the establishment 
of a new and independent system of vocational schools having no 
connection with the present system. This new system is to have 
its own school board, its own director or superintendent, its own 
plant and equipment, its own teaching force, its own course of 
study and in short, a separate management throughout. This 
separate board is to operate its schools on a separate budget pro- 
vided by the City; all of this for the purpose of getting into the 
vocational schools the voice and the help of those experienced in 
industry. 

Whatever may be our individual opinions with regard to the 
proposal that the states and local communities establish separate 
and independent systems of schools for vocational education, every 
indication seems to show that the American people are not ready 
for this step and that they want first to give the regular school 
system a chance to deal with the task. The American people do 
not want, if it can be avoided, two different systems of education 
in the same community competing for the same children ; com- 
peting for the same funds out of the same public treasury. I do 
not believe that for the present there will be one Simon Pure Dual 
System of education in the United States. There is none today. 
The nearest approach we have to it is the system which has been 
adopted in Wisconsin. There an independent board of trustees 
is selected by the Board of Education and that independent board 
of trustees has in its membership the superintendent of the public 
schools, who is at the same time the executive officer of the voca- 
tional schools. 

Whatever may be the situation elsewhere, a dual system of 
vocational education for New York City is unthinkable. Every- 
body recognizes that the magnitude and complexity of the task 
make it impossible under the eonditions which obtain in New York 
City to handle the matter in any other way than under the regular 
Board of Education. The schools of New York City are eroing to 
be called upon to deal with this subject of vocational education. 
Tf they fail, if they make that education academic instead of prac- 
tical, if they fail to serve the interests of those who ought to be 
prepared for their work in life, if they do not secure and use this 

16 



information that the practical man has to contribute, if a distinc- 
tive management is not established which will enable these schools 
to grow up and realize their aim unhampered by traditions, then 
we shall have a demand for an independent system for vocational 
education. 

Theoretically and to a very great extent, practically, there are 
a number of very strong features in a system of independent con- 
trol for vocational education. There are at the same time pro- 
nounced disadvantages in it from the standpoint of the advocates of 
unit control which need not be discussed here. Every one of those 
desirable features is worth securing by any regular Board of Edu- 
cation. There are ways by which they can be secured. When we 
have a system of distinctive management for vocational education, 
there are certain large values that undoubtedly result. 

If the regular board of education of New York City is to ad- 
minister vocational education, how can it secure these advan- 
tages ? By distinctive management within the public school 
system of all the work for vocational education. By organizing 
vocational education in such a way that while it is under the regu- 
larly constituted authority at the top of the Board of Education, 
the Superintendent of Schools and the Board of Superintendents, 
it is carried on separate from the regular schools, with a separate 
organization, courses, pupils and teachers under the direction of 
experts who are held directly responsible for the success of the 
work. 

There ought to be and I hope there are persons on the Board 
of Education who distinctively represent the vocational interests 
and experience both of employers and employes. If the Board is 
without a reasonable representation from this element in the com- 
munity, then when legitimate vacancies occur, the Mayor should 
not neglect his golden opportunity to add to the Board people who, 
in addition to their general and commendable civic interest in this 
question, bring to it the interest and the knowledge born of practi- 
cal experience. 

There ought to be and I think there is now a committee on 
vocational education under the Board of Education. That com- 
mittee ought to be and so far as I know may now be something 
more than a rubber stamp for either the Board of Education or 
the Board of Superintendents. This committee ought to have cer- 
tain definite duties and responsibilities carefully prescribed by the 
Board of Education. This Committee working under the Board 
of Education ought to be composed of the people in the Board 
who have the most interest in and the greatest amount of experi- 
ence in dealing with the problems and questions involved. 

It may be and probably is true that the present committee on 
vocational education of the New York Board of Education is made 
up of competent persons of the Board, having special interest and 
experience in dealing with the problem, and that this Committee 

17 



has already been given a large field of responsibility and initiative 
in developing the work in this City. 

In the Board of Superintendents, responsible as they are for 
every phase of the educational activities of the New York public 
school system under the City Superintendent, there should be at 
least one superintendent having special interest in and responsi- 
bility for the promotion of effective vocational education in all the 
Boroughs. 

It goes without saying that he should be a person of faith and 
enthusiasm for the movement for practical education, thoroughly 
acquainted with its problems and able to present the recommenda- 
tions of a staff of experts under him to the Board of Superinten- 
dents in a way that the importance of the subject demands and 
with the ability and force necessary to carry conviction as to what 
should be the general policies set up by the Board in this pioneer 
field of education. 

Under the present scheme of organization of the Board of Su- 
perintendents of New York City, it would be absolutely impossible 
for any one superintendent to give his entire time to vocational 
education alone. The Board as a whole, and the individual mem- 
bers of the Board have their time taken up with the consideration 
of many different affairs that have to do with every phase of the 
problem of administering all kinds of public education in a city 
of more than five million people. The superintendent for voca- 
tional education, while participating in the usual duties of the 
members of the Board of Superintendents, should have for his 
special work on that Board the things that have to do with the 
promotion of a system of vocational training for this great centre 
of population. In a sense, he should represent on the Board a 
separate department organized under him for which the Board 
would hold him directly responsible. 

This much of a scheme for vocational education has already 
been put into effect in New York. Earnest and efficient superin- 
tendents who are now members of the Board have from time to 
time been given as their special responsibility the problem of vo- 
cational education. Already heavily burdened with many other 
duties they have done all and more than could be expected from 
them without the effective organization of a department under 
them to carry on the work. 

The step which is now needed is the organization of such a 
department for vocational education. This department should in- 
clude all the activities that have to do with all the education in 
New York whose controlling purpose is to prepare people for suc- 
cessful work in industry, commerce or in the home, three of the 
four forms of vocational education which this country is seeking 
to develop, the fourth being agriculture. 

This department should have at its head as a director some 
person of recognized national reputation in the field of vocational 
training who brings to the task previous experience in organizing 

18 



and administering schemes of practical education. The department 
of which he is the head should be made directly responsible through 
him to the Superintendent for vocational education, who should 
in turn be responsible to his colleagues on the Board of Superin- 
tendents and to the City Superintendent for the successful dis- 
charge of the task. 

Under the director for vocational education for the City, there 
should be employed, from time to time as the situation develops, 
experts for particular phases of the work to be known as agents 
or supervisors or assistant directors. Under the direction of the 
director of the department, these experts should begin the devel- 
opment of schemes of vocational education for industry, commerce 
and the household. There is needed at the present time at the 
very outset at least one supervisor or assistant director for com- 
mercial education and one for household arts education. As the 
work progresses, as new schools are established and classes organ- 
ized, additional assistants should be employed to aid these in su- 
pervising the teachers in the work undertaken. 

Under the director for vocational education, there is need from 
the outset of a number of supervisors or agents to deal with dif- 
ferent phases of the problem. One supervisor might well give, 
even under present conditions, his whole time to the affairs of the 
evening industrial classes ; one to the many issues that are in- 
volved in the establishment and operation of all-day schools and 
one to face the exceedingly difficult task of introducing and su- 
pervising part-time and continuation classes for young workers. 

It is a mistake to delay the organization of such a department 
and the use of such expert service until after vocational schools 
have been established on an extensive scale. This kind of help 
is needed even more before the schools are organized than after 
they become going concerns. Where such schools should be located, 
how they should be built and equipped, for what occupations they 
should fit, what courses of study they should offer, what methods 
of teaching they should follow, how they may cooperate with the 
vocations for which they seek to train ; all these are questions to 
be worked out now and not after the schools have in a blind way 
done things that must be undone. 

The City is already awake to the need of expenditures of more 
money for vocational education. Education is a business as cer- 
tainly as manufacturing is a business. Every manufacturing es- 
tablishment expects to spend a certain portion of its budget of 
expenditures for the proper management and supervision of its 
work. It is just as necessary that New York City should plan 
now for the expenditure of a sufficient amount of money for such 
adequate supervision of the work as will insure success from the 
outset. 

The State of Massachusetts, with less than half the population 
of The City of New York and expending out of state funds last 
year not more than $150,000, has a department of vocational edu- 

19 



cation whose duty it is to supervise and approve the state-aided 
schools of the commonwealth. This department, which is a distinct 
phase of the work of the State Board of Education under the 
Commissioner, has for the coming year a deputy and a staff of 
five regular agents, to whom are added, for special kinds of super- 
vision during the year, at least five additional persons. New York 
City, with a population of more than five million people spending 
not less than $250,000, has practically no supervisors under the 
Board of Superintendents for this task. 

The Board of Superintedents face the large primary responsi- 
bility under the Superintendent of Schools for the work and the 
Superintendent is responsible to the Board and the Board, in turn, 
to the citizenship of New York. If the work of such a department 
for vocational education is effective it must have large freedom 
to adapt itself to the conditions of its problems. The Board of 
Superintendents can best discharge the task devolving upon it by 
confining its activities to the establishment of broad policies and 
principles on the recommendation of the responsible department. 
This would leave the director of the department of vocational edu- 
cation and the experts under him large initiative and freedom in 
applying these policies and principles to the establishment and 
operation of schools. 

The largest note in municipal government today is the location 
of definite responsibility so that those so responsible who have 
failed may be relieved of the task and others chosen to discharge 
it properly. Responsibility of this character in a department must 
be accompanied by sufficient authority and freedom to afford a 
fair opportunity to work out the problem unhampered. Vocational 
education for New York City requires a distinctive management 
of the task. Distinctive management requires the establishment of 
a department for vocational education. The location of definite 
responsibility requires that this department of vocational machin- 
ery should be under the Board of Education. This filters the 
responsibility for its work through the Mayor who appoints the 
Board of Education, down through the Board of Education to the 
City Superintendent of Schools, the Board of Superintendents under 
him, to the department itself. Unity in organization at the top 
coupled with the distinct separation and organization of the ma- 
chinery to deal with the problem. This is not only sound business 
and educational procedure but absolutely necessary for success. 

The same principles will apply to all those special departments 
of the New York schools, like the Bureau of Research and the 
Board of Examiners, which are in any way concerned with voca- 
tional education in the schools. It is becoming more and more 
apparent that vocational education will succeed whether handled 
by the public schools or any other way in proportion as its plans 
are based on a thorough knowledge of the conditions and problems 
to be met in the vocations, in the schools and in the attempt to 

20 



bring the vocations and the schools into helpful cooperation with 
each other. 

The Bureau of Research has already been created within the 
New York public school system. This will be needed as the work 
for vocational education progresses for continued study and in- 
vestigation in order to gather the data upon which effective schemes 
of training can be based. The organization of a separate bureau 
for the investigation of matters connected with vocational educa- 
tion would probably under the conditions which obtain in New 
York City be confusing and inadvisable. The simpler plan would 
be to organize under the Director of the Bureau of Research two 
divisions or aspects of its work; one having to do with the affairs 
of the regular education and the other with the affairs of practical 
education. This would centre responsibility by giving unity at 
the top in administration. 

There are undoubtedly by-products which result from studies 
within the regular schools that would be helpful for vocational 
education. There are undoubtedly by-products which result from 
a study of commerce, or of the industries or of the home which 
would be of large benefit for regular education. Gathered by one 
bureau, these benefits would be conserved and interchanged. A 
recognition of the two distinct functions of the Bureau would, of 
necessity, require the employment of assistants of special capacity 
and experience in dealing with matters of importance to regular 
education and likewise of specially qualified assistants to deal with 
matters of importance for vocational education. 

The success of any vocational school or class rests primarily 
with the teacher. Many of the teachers, at least, connected with 
the work must have for their largest asset thoroughgoing and suc- 
cessful experience in the trades or vocations which are being taught. 
The selection of these teachers through certification and appoint- 
ment is one of the most difficult and at the same time most critical 
tasks confronting the New York schools. 

The Board of Examiners is empowered by law to certificate all 
the teachers employed by the New York public school system in 
any capacity. This Board has through the years of the past had 
an exceedingly difficult burden placed upon it, and, on the whole, 
has discharged its task exceedingly well. Whatever else may be 
said about the system of certification which has been built up in 
the New York schools, it must be conceded without hesitation that 
the Board of Examiners has stood with its back to the wall against 
the press of partisan and personal politics which it has fought most 
successfully. Undoubtedly, a large part of the excellent work done 
by the New York public schools must be attributed to the courage 
and the honesty which the Board of Examiners has shown in the 
selection of teachers. 

Teachers for vocational subjects, particularly teachers of indus- 
trial education must be tested by different standards from the 
purely academic ones used in the selection of regular teachers. 

21 



In selecting teachers for any trade or vocation we must first 
determine for that trade or vocation the length and character 
of trade experience or contact which should be required as the 
minimum. Likewise, the extent of trade knowledge and the ability 
to use that knowledge in the trade. So also with the ability of 
the candidate to give instruction in the trade or in subjects related 
to the trade. 

There are more than four hundred trades or vocations in New 
York City which present possibilities for training of one kind or 
another through the schools. It is obvious that for each one of 
these vocations a different set of standards must be established 
and that no one person or no one group of persons can evolve these 
standards only with the help of employers and employes who have 
themselves had successful experience in the line of work under 
consideration. What is needed is the establishment of machinery 
and devices which will make this help available. 

It is equally true that the written examination alone cannot 
serve as a satisfactory method of testing the fitness of a prospective 
teacher of a vocational subject. Not only must the character of 
the written examination be different from that employed for regu- 
lar teachers, but credentials giving evidence of previous experience 
and preparation and practical tests of the ability of the candidate 
must be widely employed. Here again, no one person or group of 
persons will be able to handle the task without the close and inti- 
mate cooperation of the practical man. 

Realizing this situation, there are not wanting those who believe 
that a separate Board of Examiners for teachers of vocational edu- 
cation should be established. Under the present charter and stat- 
utes for the City, this separation could only be accomplished 
through special legislation in Albany. 

Another way which lies entirely open for adoption for the 
present at least requires a square recognition on the part of all 
concerned that the Board of Examiners has two phases or aspects 
of its work; one, the certification of teachers for the regular 
schools and the other, certification of teachers for the vocational 
schools and classes. 

A clear understanding of the entire difference in character be- 
tween the task of testing regular teachers and that of testing vo- 
cational teachers is at the present time fundamental. There fol- 
lows in its wake the necessity of organizing separate machinery 
under the Board of Examiners for the selection of vocational 
teachers. 

The limits of this address will not permit the detailed descrip- 
tion of any proposed plan. Some one or more of its members 
should be especially delegated by the Board of Examiners, subject 
to its direction, to organize special committees representing the 
different trades and occupations for which teachers are from time 
to time to be certificated. These committees, in my opinion, should 
also include representation from the department of vocational edu- 

22 



cation which is to be responsible for the work of vocational teach- 
ers, after they have been appointed. A separate committee from 
each trade should include both employers and employes of recog- 
nized standing who have special interest in the problem and are 
able to contribute the information and assistance necessary to an 
effective plan both as to standards and as to methods of testing 
the prospective teachers of subjects relating to the vocation which 
the committee represents. 

It is altogether likely that such a service would be rendered 
by such representative persons without compensation and furnish 
a very valuable way by which the vocation could cooperate with 
the schools. The work of these committees would not be burden- 
some. They could be called together at such times as might 
be necessary in order to revise standards and methods of 
testing in the light of the developments within the trade 
and the success of the teachers previously selected. Should 
it be deemed advisable to pay for the service the Board of Exam- 
iners could readily secure by order from the Board of Education 
a modest appropriation sufficient to meet the expense. 

There should be large flexibility in adopting the actual testing 
of the candidates to conditions. Written examinations, if em- 
ployed, should be of a very practical character testing the ability 
of the candidate to employ his knowledge in the trade itself. Much 
attention should be given to the careful gathering and weighing 
of information as to previous trade experience, academic prepa- 
ration and success of the candidate either as a workman or as a 
teacher. Wherever it is thought advisable practical tests could be 
made of the ability of the candidate either as a workman or as 
an instructor in trade processes or in subjects related to the trade. 

All the information of every kind concerning the candidate, 
including written examination, certificates, diplomas, recommenda- 
tions, confidential communications and records of practical tests 
of any kind should be regarded as in the nature of credentials 
to be passed upon finally before the Board of Examiners, together 
with the recommendations of those conducting the examinations. 
This would leave the Board of Examiners free as a court of last 
resort to pass upon the fitness of the applicant, just as they are 
in the case of the regular teachers. 

What is needed above everything else, is that the Board of Ex- 
aminers should recognize the difference between this task and that 
of certificating regular teachers, should organize the plan of pass- 
ing upon their qualifications so as to secure the help of the lay- 
men, should adopt the recommendations of those who are in the 
best position to know what should be done, should give large free- 
dom and flexibility in adapting the scheme to the problems and 
difficulties which must be met. All of this the Board can do and 
at the same time, as the court of last resort, discharge successfully 
its important task of certificating competent teachers for the schools 
while protecting the service from politics and corruption. 

23 



All that has been said with regard to the Bureau of Research 
and the Board of Examiners is equally true of every other depart- 
ment of the New York public schools whose duties touch in any 
way the work in vocational education. 

The Search for Special Groups 

We have all heard the story of the man who had a dollar so 
close to his eyes that he could not see the sun. There is very great 
danger that in our enthusiasm for this, that, or the other excellent 
scheme or plan of vocational education, we will lose sight not only 
of the problem as a whole, but of other schemes and plans equally 
excellent and equally necessary. Any intelligent and comprehen- 
sive approach to the question as it presents itself in its bigness 
in New York City should begin with a recognition of the many 
different groups of people whose rights must be served and whose 
needs must be met. 

The workers of New York City, both present and future, differ 
greatly from each other in ability, in preparation, in interest, in 
aptitude, in opportunities and in ambition. It would be unjust 
and narrow to adopt on an extensive scale any one scheme or plan 
which met the needs of some and to neglect at the same time those 
of all the rest. There is but one guiding star to follow in promot- 
ing vocational education here or elsewhere. We must give those 
whom we are to reach what they need and what they want, not 
what we think they ought to want. 

Before we can adopt devices for meeting the vocational needs 
of the present and prospective workers of the City we must first 
have a clear understanding of the different kinds and groups of 
persons to be trained. 

Here are more than 50,000 children over twelve years of age, 
who, somewhere near their fifteenth birthday must make a choice 
of work upon which they will enter at once or for which they will 
take more training through the schools. New York City has al- 
ready begun the development of pre-vocational classes through 
which, by coming in contact with real experience drawn from the 
world of work, these children may come to know what they want 
to do and what they are fitted to do so that they can define the 
choice of a vocation. The excellent beginning which has already 
been made should not cease until these opportunities have been 
opened up to every child who is not destined for a college and 
professional career. 

Here is another large army of thousands of children who do 
not wish to attend the regular high school nor to enter at such an 
early age upon wage earning. Their parents desire them to con- 
tinue their education longer in school and want them to receive 
training which will advance them in the direction of successful 
employment when they leave the schools. These children are of 
two different classes. Some of them want direct preparation for 

24 



some trade or occupation upon which they can enter to advantage 
after they become sixteen years of age or more. For them we 
need to establish separate industrial and trade schools like the 
Manhattan Trade School for Girls. 

Some of them, and their number is legion, have not yet made 
up their minds what vocation they wish to follow. They want to 
extend their general education and to gain industrial experience 
and insight which will enable them when they face the problem 
of employment to make an intelligent choice of work and follow 
it with some understanding of its problems gained through the 
schools. For these, we need the development of general industrial 
or vocational schools like the New York Vocational School for Boys. 

Here is a great army of children, 40,000 or more in number, 
leaving the schools every year to become bread winners at fourteen 
years of age. Up to this time, we have utterly neglected the edu- 
cational rights and needs of these children as soon as they left 
the regular schools to become wage earners. Perhaps the most 
important problem before any American city at the present time 
is the development of continuation schools which will reach these 
young workers. They may be roughly grouped into four classes. 

A small number, much less than 5%, are engaged in vocations 
which offer opportunities for the future and for which the schools 
can give valuable supplementary training. 

We need to establish continuation schools claiming a portion 
of the time of these children for further training, which will in- 
crease their proficiency in their work, if they desire it. 

A second group, and the most neglected, is made up of children 
who left the schools below grade, most of them not having passed 
beyond the sixth year of the elementary schools. We need con- 
tinuation school instruction for these, which will give further train- 
ing in the elementary school processes and develop general and 
civic intelligence. 

The third group finished the elementary school course and now 
desire to continue general education as the way out to efficiency 
and happiness. We need to offer them in the time we can 
secure away from their employment, an opportunity to pursue 
further whatever studies they may desire. 

A fourth group are engaged in dead-end or blind-alley jobs but 
have buried within them ability and skill for some desirable trade. 
Continuation schools should offer opportunities through prevoca- 
tional training for these to learn what trade they should follow 
and then should, so far as time permits, give them training for it. 

Here are thousands of young persons between sixteen and 
twenty-one years of age who are employed as apprentices or other- 
wise, in the skilled trades and vocations in New York City. We 
need to establish part-time schools and classes in order to give 
these young workers a chance to secure the preparation necessary 
for the widest proficiency in their employment, giving an avenue 
out to better wage, promotion and leadership. 

25 



Here are thousands of adult workers over twenty-one years of 
age who are employed in the unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled 
work of the City. Three groups present themselves. There are 
the men and women, many of them foreign born, who want more gen- 
eral education. Some of them want to learn our language. Some want 
such things as arithmetic and some want other general night school 
courses. Some want an opportunity to express themselves in art. 
General evening classes should minister to their needs. There are 
the men and women who want advanced technical instruction for 
the trades in which they are engaged. These should have the bene- 
fit of general evening technical classes of a very practical char- 
acter, such as are now offered in some of the New York evening 
schools and in such institutions as the Mechanics Institute, Cooper 
Union and Pratt Institute. 

There are the ordinary workers in the trade who want to learn 
new machines or new processes which require a greater knowledge 
of the related studies that will assist them in the ordinary work 
of their callings. For these, we need to establish separate classes 
which will give the short and brief courses necessary to serve the 
interests of specific groups of men in overalls. They are the bone 
and sinew of our manufacturing life. 

There is a growing feeling throughout the country that as long 
as children under sixteen years of age are employed in industry, 
legislation should provide for compulsory instruction in continua- 
tion classes for them. In Wisconsin, a state-wide compulsory law 
of this character has already gone into effect and has resulted in 
the large attendance on the "Wisconsin continuation schools. Mass- 
achusetts. New York and Indiana have local option laws which 
authorize boards of education in local communities to establish 
and make such continuation classes compulsory upon children un- 
der sixteen. Thus far. Boston has been the one city in all these 
states which has through its school committee adopted these com- 
pulsory classes. These will go into effect on September 1st of the 
present year. 

Two years ago I had the pleasure of being associated with Mr. 
Arthur Dean. Chief of the Division of Trade Schools for New 
York State, in drawing and securing passage for a local option 
law which authorizes any city in New York State to maintain such 
compulsory classes and to require the attendance upon them of 
employed children between fourteen and sixteen years of age for 
not less than four nor more than eight hours per week between 
eight a.m. and five p.m. 

This measure was known as the Wilmot Bill, having been in- 
troduced by Senator Wilmot. Its passage was greatly aided by 
many different civic agencies and had the hearty support of the 
New York public school authorities; the act being approved by 
President Churchill, Superintendent Maxwell and Mayor Gaynor 
before being signed by the Governor. Probably no measure ever 

26 



passed by the legislature gave greater power into the hands of 
the Board of Education of New York City than the Wilmot Bill. 

Under its provisions the Board of Education may establish 
and make compulsory the attendance upon continuation schools in 
any way it chooses. It may promote the work by making it com- 
pulsory upon specific nationalities or races, boroughs, industrial 
areas. The Board is empowered to select the children according 
to age, or health or employment or previous schooling or grade 
of school attained or upon any other basis which it may deem ad- 
visable. It would be possible under this act for the school au- 
thorities to single out one special group of fifteen children and 
require them to attend such classes. 

One of the moving causes for this bill and for the hearty sup- 
port which it received in New York City was the fact that it 
promised a substitute for the present utterly indefensible statute 
requiring the attendance upon evening classes of children under 
sixteen years of age who are employed during the day. These 
children after long hours of labor in the factories are compelled 
by law to attend evening school instruction. 

The reports of District Superintendent Shiels and of City Su- 
perintendent Maxwell on the evening school during the last two 
or three years point out that it is not possible to enforce the law 
with the present force of attendance officers, that less than 25% 
of the children who come within the purview of the statute attend 
the evening schools, that they fall asleep at their desks and that 
physicians and social workers are agreed that such evening school 
attendance for these children results in far more physical ill than 
it gives educational benefit. 

There are but two escapes from this situation. One is to raise 
the age of compulsory school attendance to sixteen. For this step, 
New York does not as yet seem ready. The other is to require 
employers to give these children an opportunity to attend contin- 
uation classes during the day. 

Although this law has been in operation for over a year, not 
one single compulsory class has been established in New York. The 
problem facing the public school authorities is an exceedingly diffi- 
cult one. They are not prepared to make the attendance compul- 
sory upon from 50,000 to 80,000 children which would be neces- 
sary if they attempted a general enforcement of compulsory at- 
tendance. If they pick out specific groups of children or the chil- 
dren from specific vocations, the charge of discrimination and 
favoritism would be made. 

The public school authorities have concluded up to this time 
to attempt the development of this continuation work on a per- 
suasive and voluntary basis. Here and there encouraging results 
have already been secured, but the response to the voluntary ap- 
peal has, to say the least, considering the great magnitude of the 
task, not been very encouraging. At the present rate of progress, 

27 



New York will require a quarter of a century to deal with the 
problem. 

Personally, I favor an amendment of the present act so as to 
provide that within five years from the passage of the amendment, 
the attendance upon such continuation classes will be made com- 
pulsory for the entire state. This will stimulate all local Boards 
of Education, including the New York City Board, to begin to 
deal with the problem in an experimental way in order that they 
may learn how to handle it in a large way when state-wide com- 
pulsion ensues. It will at the same time give due notice to local 
employers of the step which is to be taken at a later date in the 
enforcement of the act on a state-wide basis and stimulate them 
to deal in a cooperative way with the local authorities now so that 
they may be in a position to meet the expansion of the act 

In my opinion, it is advisable to develop prevocational centres 
and all-day industrial and trade schools by industrial and com- 
mercial areas, choosing those that furnish the most promising op- 
portunities. Continuation and part-time schools on the other hand 
should be spread out over all the five boroughs in order to take 
advantage of every possible opportunity of. inducing employers to 
cooperate. 

The effort to reach working people in evening schools should 
also be made through classes that are offered at points favorable 
to workingmen in all the five boroughs. 



Cooperation with the Industry 

In the ancient days, master and workman felt and discharged 
a common duty and responsibility for the training of the workers 
in order that the integrity of the craft might be preserved. Modern 
industry shows a very decided tendency to throw the entire burden 
of expense and trouble of every kind on the schools. Part of this 
is, of course, due to the fact that the schools have not yet been 
able to present to modern industry a promising program of coop- 
eration. 

It is certain that the school men cannot solve this problem by 
themselves. They must have the close and intimate help of em- 
ployers and employes in the trades and vocations in dealing with 
the question. Time will not permit here any detailed description 
of ways in which this can be done. Representatives of the trades 
ought, and I think will be willing, not only to confer with the 
public school authorities but to serve without compensation on 
committees provided the public school authorities recognize the 
work of such committees by using the information and the rec- 
ommendations which they offer. 

With the school authorities as the third part, an increasing 
number of employers and trade unions will be willing to confer 
together upon ways and means by which they can aid the schools 

28 



in the training of workers. A growing number of employers will 
find themselves willing to recognize educational training by larger 
wage and to go to the trouble to so organize their work as to offer 
their young workers time away from their employment for other 
training. 

The expense of vocational education in New York City when 
developed to the full would be enormous if all of it were under- 
taken by the schools. The vocations themselves must bear a part 
of the cost. Shops must offer the opportunity for the shop train- 
ing, leaving the schools to give related instruction. In many cases, 
shops and factories and commercial houses must provide facilities 
for classroom instruction under the roof of the plant. Where great 
industries like the garment trade draw together large numbers of 
workers into unions having large resources, employers and unions 
should be asked wherever possible to undertake to a large extent 
at least the joint burden and responsibility of training their own 
workers. 

Taking Mahomet to the Mountain 

The establishment of vocational education in the community 
requires a campaign of promotion at the outset. Public sentiment 
must be roused, the value of the work must be set forth, the ad- 
vantages of the schools advertised. Schools and classes must be 
located at favorable points. We must carry the facilities for train- 
ing close to the worker. Whenever necessary, we must take the 
training into the very shop where he is employed, always with 
the reservation that the training paid for at the public expense 
must be controlled and supervised by representatives of the public. 

A distinctive management for vocational education within the 
school system through a separate department charged with the 
duty and responsibility for its success. The employment of ex- 
pert service in administration and supervision with large power 
of recommendation, initiative and direction. The establishment 
of machinery bringing employers and employes into hearty co- 
operation with the vocational work of the schools and using the 
practical advice and assistance which they contribute. A search 
after the many different kinds and groups of persons — young and 
old — not yet reached but needing the help of the schools and the 
beginning of schemes of training to reach them. A recognition 
of the duty and responsibility of the vocations themselves, par- 
ticularly the larger ones of bearing a share of the task of training 
their own workers. Large emphasis at the present time on the 
promotion of part-time and continuation classes for wage earners, 
who are so numerous and so long neglected. A legitimate cam- 
paign for vocational education which will bring its benefits close 
to the workers and carry its facilities wherever necessary to reach 
them. These are essential features of the program for New York 
City. 

29 



Chairman: I will now introduce to you Dr. Gustave Strauben- 
muller, who has been an unusually careful student of industrial 
education and a recognized authority in the development of that 
movement in Germany. The establishment of the Vocational School 
for Boys and the Manhattan Trade School for Girls in this City 
was due, in a large measure, to his efforts. 



30 



Dr. Gustave Straubenmuller, Associate City Superinten- 
dent op Schools, New York City, addressed the meeting as 

FOLLOWS : 

Your Honor, Ladies and Gentlemen: A few years ago an 
attache of the embassy of a leading European country was in- 
vestigating a matter entrusted to him by his government. He 
was greatly surprised and impressed by the fact that American 
employees were superior in general intelligence to the people of 
the same class in his own country. He determined to find a rea- 
son for this. He found that the railroads, the stores and the 
manufacturing plants at that time were doing nothing to develop 
this general intelligence. He determined to search farther, and 
decided finally that it must lay with the child, its schooling and 
general training. This foreign student unconsciously contributed 
his mite to the tendency which led to the naming of the 20th 
century as the " Century of the Child." It remained for this 
century to take the child in all its relations to life from the realm 
of indifference to the high plane of a vital issue. 

For to-night's discussion on vocational training let us fancy 
that New York City is a vast stage, and let me arrange the stage 
setting for you. On one side of this vast stage there are the most 
diversified industries and occupations found in any city of the 
world. On the other side of this stage there are a million chil- 
dren in schools of various kinds, the majority of whom will leave 
school at fourteen years of age without graduating. 

We know that these children and these industries and occupa- 
tions will sooner or later become interdependent. The problem 
is, therefore: "What can be done by the educational authorities, 
by the employees and by the employers to fit these children to 
continue and perpetuate these industries and occupations, and to 
help to bring about conditions that will be satisfactory to the child 
and to the employer, and the community at large? 

Let us turn to the industries and occupations to try to find 
out what the conditions are that must be met. 

The margin of profit in business has been so diminished in 
recent times that reduction of waste of all kinds has become a 
great factor in the successful conduct of a business. The skilled 
workers, trained by others, no longer swarm to this country to 
do our skilled work. The industries that formerly relied parasiti- 
cally upon the influx of skilled workers must now increasingly 
depend upon American skilled labor. Judging? from reports and 
statements, there seems to be a dearth of this kind of labor, and 
this scarcity will increase and will affect disastrously our business 
interests, unless something be done to prevent it. 

The employer is not yet quite sure what he wants the schools 

31 



to do that they can do, nor what he himself can do to remedy 
matters. He, too, in a small way, is experimenting. Both the 
merchant and the manufacturer complain that boys and girls who 
come to them are not well prepared for the work required of them. 

On the school side of this scene we find children leaving at 
fourteen, for whom there are no places in the skilled industries 
until they are sixteen or older. We find no special attempt at 
vocational guidance, but we do find in elementary schools, in high 
schools, and in colleges a realization that something must be done 
to meet changed conditions. 

What can be done to bring about an adjustment? 

This is still a mooted question on both sides. But there is one 
thing that we do know. Nothing much can be accomplished until 
the city authorities, the employers and the employees themselves 
work in harmony. 

If the employer will find out what he wants the schools to do, 
and what he can do in the matter of training; if the employees 
will take advantage of the proper training offered them ; if the 
city authorities will give financial aid and encouragement, a scheme 
of vocational education for shop, store and schools can be developed. 

We have in Mr. John Purroy Mitchell a mayor who senses 
the importance of this question and the need of its solution; who 
has weighed and is weighing the means suggested for its solution: 
who is taking a personal interest in the matter of vocational train- 
ing; whose cooperation, leadership and advice will be of moment- 
ous value; whose presence here tonight marks a new epoch in the 
development of the education that fits a child to its future life. 
We have a President of the Board of Education whose enthusiasm 
is boundless in the cause, and a Board of Education that will 
support vocational training on sane lines. We have some manu- 
facturers and some business men who are alive to the situation, 
and we have labor organizations willing to help. Thorough and 
extensive cooperation, however, is still lacking. Let me define 
some of the terms to be used tonight bv auotina' from a report 
of Dr. Shiels : 

"Vocational instruction may include commercial, trade and agri- 
cultural instruction, and training in the home-making arts. Any 
of these types may be taught while the child is in the ordinary 
school, either in prevocational classes, or in a school specifically 
devoted to such work (e.g., the all-day trade school) ; in both of 
which cases the pupils are entirely under school authority and, 
therefore, not regularly employed. All-day trade schools are some- 
times called 'prevocational schools,' as they undertake to teach 
a pupil some occupation for which, after proper trial, he seems 
especially fitted, but these schools should not be confused with the 
ordinary prevocational classes, as the work of the former is more 
intensive, and the equipment usually more complete. Again, we 
may have provision for the instruction of pupils who are regu- 
larly employed; if a portion of regular hours of employment 

32 



be devoted to such instruction, we have the day 'continuation 
schools'; if no part of the regular time of employment be used, 
and if the instruction be during evening hours, we have the 'con- 
tinuation evening school.' An evening school might afford instruc- 
tion in some branch of commerce or of the trades to pupils whose 
working hours were not devoted to the subject they were follow- 
ing in the evening. Such a school would be an 'evening vocational 
school,' but its pupils would not be 'continuation pupils.' " 

Now let us see what actually has been done and is being done 
on both sides, and let us begin with the schools. The first ques- 
tion that arises is : Shall there be any vocational training as such 
in the elementary schools? Many educators and business men be- 
lieve that the best training a child can receive for an industrial 
or commercial career is a good foundation in the fundamental 
subjects constituting the ordinary school curriculum, and that such 
training should extend over a period of seven or eight years. This 
is the prevailing opinion in Germany, whose rise to industrial 
supremacy is known to you all. So firm are the Germans in this 
belief that shopwork, which is very common in American schools, 
is seldom found in the German elementary schools. 

If, therefore, we were to follow in the footsteps of Berlin, for 
example, we should have no shops or kitchens in our elementary 
schools. But society in Germany is not democratized as much as 
it is in New York. Therefore, we have a different problem to 
solve. In Germany a son usually follows in the footsteps of his 
father. If his father be a mechanic, he becomes a mechanic; if 
his father be in official or business life, he aims to get there him- 
self. If his father be in a profession, that profession will be his 
goal. Thus the personnel of the industries, the professions and 
business are recruited in quite a natural way. This is not quite 
so with us, and hence we do not in the same degree get the advan- 
tages that come from inherited dispositions. Our girls and boys 
are not only not predestined for their life work, but the whole 
matter is left frequently to chance. It is for this reason that 
vocational guidance in this country is a necessity, and our problem 
a different one from that of Germany. 

Drawing, considered the fundamental subject for all trades, 
was introduced into the elementary schools some fifty years ago. 
It was introduced for industrial purposes. There was little prac- 
tical gain, because the lack of cooperation between the trades and 
the schools led to wrong methods of teaching. Today the teaching 
of drawing is more along practical lines. The next subject intro- 
duced for the development of manual skill was manual training, 
including shopwork. These subjects, regarded at first as only of 
cultural value, now have a distinct trade tendency. Shopwork 
is pursued not only in the interest of education in general, but 
also in the interest of trade education. 

Shopwork in New York City is being taught to 60,000 boys, 
of whom 4,861 are below the 7th school year, i.e., the Board of 

33 



Education is gradually extending shop practice to all boys above 
a certain age, instead of restricting it to the boys who are in the 
7th and 8th years. More than 60% of the teachers of shop work 
are practical mechanics. "Work that would have cost the Board 
of Education $8,000 was done in the schools last year. The tend- 
ency toward the practical is evident. Shopwork might be made 
more practical still if the time devoted to it were extended, if a 
few power machines were set up in some schools, if simple sheet- 
metal work were added as an alternating course, and finally, if 
the course were made elastic enough to be adapted to some one 
worth-while industry in the neighborhood. Shopwork is daily get- 
ting away from its strictly cultural leaning ; it is becoming more 
and more practical. 

But real practical work in vocational training is being done 
(1) in our day schools, (2) in continuation classes in cooperation 
with certain firms, (3) in our evening schools, and (4) in our 
truant school. 

In connection with our day schools we have three trade 
schools with a register of 1,327 ; we have two prevocational schools 
with a register of 362; we have one trade modeling class with a 
register of 15, and two schools in which home-making is taught, 
with a register of 823 ; we have also a truant school. It must 
be confessed that the total number thus being instructed, about 
2,527, is entirely inadequate : we are not reaching the masses. 
In the cooperative plan with various firms we are instructing 
about 256 pupils, and in our high and elementary evening schools, 
we are instructing in trade subjects, in commercial branches, and 
in home-making about 17,000 pupils. I personally believe in the 
so-called trade school as we have it in New York City. It is in- 
tended for the ] 4-year-old boy (or girl) who knows what trade 
he wishes to learn and whose parents can afford to keep him at 
school for a .year or two longer. These schools give a boy an op- 
portunity to lay a good foundation for a skilled trade at an age 
when he can not get an opening in the skilled trades. In these 
schools for boys and girls we give a good knowledge of the tech- 
nique and some speed in about eighteen trades or branches of 
trades, together with English and other subjects related to the 
trades. I believe in teaching the home-making occupations to 
girls because I know there is nothing more important to man than 
the proper care of man, and because I know that 85% of all our 
women over fifteen years of age become housekeepers. I believe 
in that prevocational school whose main object is to o-ive a boy or 
girl a ehance to discover his aptitudes and his leanings. The 
average New York boy gets no help in this direction from any other 
source, and, therefore, frequently becomes a drifter. I believe 
in our trade and commercial evening schools because they eive an 
opportunity to the man, woman, boy or girl who is engaeed at 
some highly specialized trade an opportunity to learn some par- 
ticular process, to handle some one machine, and to make of him- 

34 



self a better workman or employee ; I believe above all in the great 
efficacy of the continuation school on the cooperative plan because, 
with the proper laws and proper cooperation, we can reach the 
masses and supply their needs. The needs of the masses, like the 
masses themselves, are rapidly progressive in nature. We can not 
afford to sleep on this proposition. 

What is this day continuation class or school? It is a cooper- 
ative school. The cooperation takes place between a firm and the 
Board of Education. The object of the school is to increase the 
industrial or commercial efficiency of boys and girls. It is con- 
ducted in the day time so that children of 14, 15 and 16 years 
who work may have the evening for rest and recreation. Health 
demands this. 

In what does cooperation consist? The Board of Education 
supplies the teacher and the firm pays the full wages of the boy 
or girl while attending school, and also loses the services of the 
boy or girl during that time. 

What is to be taught in a continuation class? Boys and girls 
who leave school at fourteen without graduating therefrom need 
additional instruction in the common subjects. No child under 
sixteen, and better still, under eighteen, should be freed entirely 
from school control. The continuation school keeps a boy or a 
girl under that control, and, in addition, closely relates the school 
work with his daily occupation. For a class of boys or girls in 
an organized business or trade very definite and very practical 
instruction can be provided; for a class of errand boys or mes- 
senger boys or hall boys continuation work in school subjects can 
be provided. In some cases of illiteracy, some firms believe it 
pays them to have the boys and men and women taught how to 
read and write, as, in their estimation, it has a direct bearing on 
their efficiency in doing purely manual work. One firm in England 
gives a four years' course to its girl workers without giving any 
direct training in the work of the factory. They believe it pays. 
All who have tried it believe it pays. There is no doubt that the 
continuation idea carried out to its fullest extent reaches more 
boys and more girls than any other kind proposed. Why is the 
continuation school so superior? Because the boy studies where 
he works and while he works; his studies are not a thing apart 
from his work ; he sees the practical application of his studies and 
the need of such application. He has a motive, than which there 
is no superior impetus. 

Where is the continuation class to be taught? It is difficult 
to conduct continuation classes in school buildings in New York 
City. Large business houses, factories and stores in New York 
City are usually located in non-residential sections, where there 
are practically no schoolhouses. To ask these employees to travel 
many miles to a school from their places of employment involves 
too great a loss of time for the firm and the employee. The solu- 
tion of the problem is to rent buildings or to erect schoolhouses 

35 



in such sections, but no one can expect The Citv of New York 
to do this. Therefore it is the plain duty of the business man to 
supply a room or a space in which the proper kind of instruction 
may be given. Or, two or three or more firms of the same char- 
acter and located in the same section of the City may rent a nearby 
loft for school purposes. As soon as we become convinced of the 
value of such schools, rooms will be furnished by the firms. But 
we shall never be convinced if we do not experiment with these 
schools, to learn how to adapt them to conditions as they are. 

The danger of the continuation school or class lies in the mis- 
understanding of what constitutes such class. Boys or girls at- 
tending a continuation class should be classified according to trades 
and occupations; schools not so organized have proven a failure 
wherever they have been tried. 

In connection with the day continuation classes it may be noted 
that there is a law in this state permitting the Board of Educa- 
tion at any time to compel attendance of working boys and girls 
under sixteen between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., and that an 
employer who will not allow such attendance must surrender the 
privilege of employing such labor. 

The evening trade and commercial schools are, next to the day 
continuation schools, the means of reaching the greater number 
of students. While these schools are primarily for the student 
who has trade experience, i.e., who is working at his trade during 
the day, yet there is even in these schools a large place for insight 
into trade processes for those without trade experience. 

The student in the evening school gets from the school what 
no shop can give him, for lack of time. He is a most satisfactory 
student because he relates every step he takes to real conditions 
of business and manufacturing. The teachers of trade subjects 
in all our schools in which trades are taught are mechanics; they 
are men and women who have been in the trades and who, in many 
cases, are still working at the trades they are teaching. 

Why did the day trade schools and the evening trade schools 
develop before the continuation or cooperative schools? Simply 
because their organization was free from all complexity; they 
could be organized by the Board of Education without the coop- 
eration of an outside body. Why did the schools established by 
corporations grow more rapidly than continuation classes? For 
exactly the same reason, because their organization is simple. Co- 
operation between two bodies whose functions and methods are 
entirely different is a complex process needing nice adjustment. 
The object of both parties to the bargain is really the same, viz., 
to improve and to increase the industrial and commercial capacity 
of the employee, but the manner in which it is to be accomplished 
offers some difficulties. In the first place, the viewpoint and meth- 
ods of the school man and the business man are popularly supposed 
to be different. Hence the present need is to get these two train- 
ing bodies together for the purpose of understanding each other. 

36 



The second difficulty is to find a place in which to teach boys and 
girls already employed. This I have already touched upon. The 
third problem is the problem of the teacher. 

Besides the various kinds of trade and commercial training 
referred to, manufacturers and owners of large stores are doing 
their own training. So important and far-reaching is this move- 
ment that already a central office has been established in 'New 
York City by the National Association of Corporation Schools for 
the purpose of assisting those belonging to the Association in es- 
tablishing schools. Fifty or more of the largest corporations in 
the United States have joined in this movement. The object of 
this Association is to develop the efficiency of the individual em- 
ployee, to increase efficiency in industry, and to have courses in 
established educational institutions modified to meet more fully 
the needs of present day industry. 

Labor unions have established schools of their own, notably in 
the printing trade. Besides these there are private and philan- 
thropic enterprises that have been in the field for a long time. 

If I were in full control to do as I thought proper, and had 
the means to carry out my ideas, I should select for experimental 
purposes some section of the City, such as Greenpoint, in which 
I should develop the continuation idea both in day and evening 
schools. I should attempt in this section first to stop waste by 
some method of selecting boys and girls in the elementary schools 
for the work which they seem best fitted to do ; in other words, 
I should guide them. This plan, if followed even superficially, 
would stop some waste of time on the part of the child, and also 
on the part of the employer after the child is in business. In 
other words, I should begin selection, and possibly a little special- 
ization in the elementary schools, even if I had to do it on a theo- 
retical basis. 

I should depend for success upon intelligent cooperation, which, 
it is possible, would have to be developed and nurtured. I should 
get the schoolman to know what the shops require, and employers 
and employees to know what the teacher can do. 

I should try to concentrate upon this movement all the social, 
business and educational forces of the section. I should exhibit 
the results of experiments to both employers and employees. 

I should continue the Mayor's idea of conferences, and lastly, I 
should be hopeful that a way could be found to maintain our indus- 
trial efficiency, even without the aid of foreign-trained workmen, 
and a way could be found to prepare our industries for world-wide 
competition, and a way could be found to gain the ability to adjust 
ourselves quickly and sucessfully to changing economic conditions. 



Chairman: We are going to omit one or two of the musical 
numbers. I know we are all anxious to hear fully from Mr. Wirt. 
I do not want his speech to come too late in the evening. You 



37 



can make all kinds of plans, good or bad, but however good we 
cannot carry them out without money. Money comes through the 
Board of Estimate and Apportionment. Now when the Board of 
Education goes down there to ask for funds there are two officers 
whom it must face and whom it must persuade — the Comptroller 
and the Chairman of the Committee on School Inquiry. Both are 
here this evening and T wall ask both to speak now. 



38 



Hon. William A. Prendergast, Comptroller op the City of 
New York, addressed the meeting as follows : 

Your Honor, Ladtes and Gentlemen: Neither his Honor the 
Mayor, nor the energetic President of the Board of Education 
need be in the slightest doubt but that I thoroughly understood 
the reasons for my being here. It is one of the privileges of the 
Comptrollership to be invited to select parties ultimately for the 
discussion of some little matter that will cost the City some little 
money ; to large dinners where great public problems are duscussed 
to which the City treasury should unquestionably be allied, and 
then to public meetings such as this, but I am glad to be here any 
way, even if for only financial convenience. 

I do not intend to say very much because I know that you 
have upon the program two very distinguished speakers from 
abroad and that you are anxious to hear from them, and all that 
is possible of the evening should be given over to them. 

I want to say for the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, 
if I may assume to speak for it in a very modest way, Mr. Mayor, 
that it has become more thoroughly appreciative every month of 
the importance of a- better relationship between that Board and 
the Board of Education, and I think we can say with justice, or 
with truth or accuracy, that the estimates, or rather the budget, 
of the Department of Education for this year was made up more 
fairly, more accurately, with less misunderstanding, or disputes, 
with fewer altercations between high officials in the Board of Esti- 
mate and Apportionment and very high officials in the Board of 
Education than any budget in our history, and we are all very 
glad that this is the case, and anything that any members of the 
Board can do to continue this era of good feeling and make it 
a permanent one, I think the members of the Board want to do. 
I think the Board of Estimate and Apportionment has become so 
thoroughly appreciative of the great work that you are supposed 
to do, the responsibility that is upon you, that this year it organ- 
ized among its standing Committees a Committee known as the 
Committee on Education, the first time the Board has had such 
a, Committee. To this Committee is being referred all questions 
pertaining to educational matters, and I am sure that this scheme 
is going to be very much more satisfactory than the old one, be- 
cause now to every question in which the Board of Education is 
interested the same Committee will give its attention. And we 
also have as the very efficient Secretary of that Committee one 
who is an educator herself, who understands the requirements of 
the educator, Mrs. Ford. Really the members of the Committee 
and the Chairman do very little indeed — we are only supposed to 

39 



vote when it comes to money. Now that was to be the principal 
point of my address and I will address myself to it. 

We are all very well aware that New York City must meet 
the pressing economic demand of the times by preparing her chil- 
dren properly for a vocation, no matter what that vocation may 
be. Very often when you use this word vocation people think 
you are only referring to trades, but of course vocation covers 
the entire field of human endeavor. Now I believe that New York 
City has already done a great deal in that respect. I listened 
with admiration to a most explicit statement of the work that 
New York City has already undertaken from Superintendent Max- 
well some two weeks ago tomorrow, and after listening to that 
statement — we hope to give everybody an opportunity to read it 
— no one will be under any misapprehension that New York City 
has not been entirely alive to the fact that she had a great prob- 
lem before her. One reason why more progress has not been made 
in this work is that the demands of the Educational Department 
have been so great that it seemed almost impossible to furnish 
all the money that had been asked for. Great cities like New York 
are conservative, they do not move as rapidly as Gary, Indiana. 
New York, like all other great cities, usually permits other com- 
munities to experiment with things before she undertakes to do 
them, and after we undertake to do them, we do them. 

Now, in order to carry out the designs of the Department of 
Education we realize that money, as I have said, is required. I 
do not suppose that it is possible — I base this statement upon my 
experience of the last four years in the Board of Estimate and 
Apportionment — I do not suppose it is possible to economize in 
very many directions, but I will say this (and I am sure that 
I am not going outside of the bounds of prudence when I say it) 
that supported by the very earnest wishes of his Honor the Mayor, 
and imbued as T am with full sense of our responsibilities towards 
this question of vocational training, and speaking, I think, on 
behalf of all the other members of the Board of Estimate and 
Apportionment, that if there will be evolved what seems to be a 
thoroughly comprehensive plan for developing the vocational idea 
in our public sehnol system, the Board of Education when it comes 
forward with that plan is going to receive as substantial support 
as the generosity of the city treasury will warrant or justify. 



Chairman: T now have the pleasure of presenting to you an- 
other distinguished visitor, Mr. H. E. Miles, President of the 
Wisconsin State Board of Industrial Education. 



40 



Mr. H. E. Miles, President op the Wisconsin State Board 
of Industrial Education, addressed the meeting as follows: 

Mr. Mayor, Members of the Board of Education, Ladies and 
Gentlemen : There are two kinds of schools in this world, one of 
which we, in America, seem to have utterly overlooked. One is 
the school of childhood — a place for babies and immaturity. In it 
are all our children from the sixth to the fourteenth year, a pre- 
cious lot in whom are our hopes and our dependence. They are 
however, wholly receptive, imitative, obedient, absorbative. They 
are doing nothing in an objective way that is helpful or produc- 
tive. The educators' task in this school is to develop scientifically 
and in all directions the faculties of these little ones that they 
may be alert, well balanced and, in due time, creative. The high- 
est type of scientific and professional training is essential for this 
work. A half million teachers are devoting their lives to this 
school. We are criticizing them very severely and, from my stand- 
point, justly in the main. 

The other school is the school of the day's work — the school 
of adult practical experience. In the first school, the school of 
childhood, are only a fifth of our people — in this other school, the 
school of the day's work, are three-fourths of the people — are the 
creators — the burden bearers — all of the hope and the fear of the 
present day, the good and the evil and the entire making of the 
life of the present. 

In making this distinction, I am overlooking that little 3% of 
the people who go through our high schools and that exceedingly 
small number, a fraction of 1%, who go through our colleges. 

Into this second school, the school of the day's work, full of 
anguish and hope and fear, of blind but fierce endeavor, the Amer- 
ican state must now enter. It must correlate knowledge with ex- 
perience, make clear the pathways of the mind from lowly place 
to higher, and higher. 

Aware and alarmed at the human waste, the loss and sacrifice, 
not of a part, but of the majority of our people, in the struggle 
of life, we are inclined to turn upon the first school, the school 
of childhood, ourselves ignorant of the second school — and its sep- 
arate needs — and insist that the first school, the present common 
schools of the country, now assume the impossible task of training 
for industry, of teaching the actual practical requirements of every 
occupation in the world. 

We blame this first school because 80% or more of its children 
leave its four-walled cloistered precincts at their fourteenth birth- 
day, and propose now, by various and sundry devices, or, per- 
chance, by sheer force of law and the police officer, as in cities 
in this state, to induce or compel what we can of these fourteen- 

41 



year children to stay on in this school of childhood, to stay away 
from the world of the day 's work and of accomplishment as though 
work and accomplishment are things to be avoided, unworthy and 
degrading. 

Adolescence 

Children do not leave school at fourteen simply because they 
are fourteen — nor because the law permits, but because they are 
adolescent. The reason is psychological — pathological — you can't 
keep the buttertiy from leaving the chrysalis at the appointed time 
without hurting it or killing it. You can't keep the flower from 
bursting from the bud without starving it. At adolescence the 
will and the creative faculties burst into flower — those faculties 
and capacities which are the most precious that we possess and 
that most distinguish us from the brute creation. I shall never 
forget when, on mentioning this to Mr. Edison, he exclaimed: 
"Yes, I know that — I've been to the psychologists — I've been all 
through that — to bind the adolescent child to the wooden bench 
and the white page with the back marks on it — to say incessantly 
to his creative impulses: 'Don't, don't, don't,' is to palsy his will, 
as you would palsy an arm by binding it to the side. That's why 
so many men, most men, have little will power and are ever afraid 
to do those things which judgment clearly directs." 

We adults may mislead fourteen-year children. We may intro- 
duce into the school of childhood various toys and playthings — 
even things made for altogether serious use — hammers and chisels, 
saws and sewing machines, needles and cooking-utensils, and no 
one can believe more than I in the introduction of these imple- 
ments, and through their use, teaching the mind through the hand 
and eye, and preparing the child, in a childish way, but just as 
practically as his little mind makes possible, the beginnings of 
those things which he is to do when he is a man. 

When a great Spartan king, 2600 years ago, was asked "What 
shall we teach the children?" he answered: "Teach them what 
they are to do when they are men. ' ' The schools of America have 
tried only to develop those general faculties and perceptions which 
may enable the child quickly to grasp the essentials of the particu- 
lar occupations upon which they must later enter. And for want 
of detailed and particular instruction sixty per cent, of our chil- 
dren — more than half of all who are born in America — concrete 
or hand-minded, unable to accept of mere generalizations, at four- 
teen are still in the fifth or sixth grade and then quit school. 

The Cost 

According to a recent statement of the National Society, three 
million of these children leave school each year at fourteen. The 
cost per pupil in every vocational or trade high school, of which 
I know, that is, schools like the Stuyvesant High in New York, 

42 



the Cass in Detroit or the Lane in Chicago, is about seventy dollars 
in running expense and thirty dollars in interest on plant and 
up-keep, or one hundred dollars per pupil per year. To this is 
to be added at least another hundred in loss of wages, sometimes 
sorely needed, or a total loss to the city and the child of two hun- 
dred dollars per year, or six hundred million dollars for the three 
million children per year, on the assumption that they should all 
have such training, either in the women's arts, manufacturing, 
commerce or agriculture. Twice this sum, if we include, as we 
must, the fourteenth and the fifteenth year, and four times if 
we go to the eighteenth year, as is contemplated for all continua- 
tion and part-time schools. The Superintendent of Schools of 
Pennsylvania voices the general judgment that such a plan of teach- 
ing the vocations would bankrupt any state. 

Make all the allowances you will from the figures here sug- 
gested — and great allowance is necessary — and you still have an 
annual expense very far exceeding the present total cost of the 
public schools. An expense that must be noted with a billion mark. 
Los Angeles, a city of a half million, has done its best in this di- 
rection. Its Superintendent and Board of Education are brilliant 
and able. But with a constantly rising school tax a forty per cent, 
increase in the appropriation was demanded a year ago — about two- 
thirds of this increase was for the increased expense due to the 
introduction of the so-called vocational element. I sat repeatedly 
with a committee of very able citizens of that community, not all 
of them men, some of them very closely allied with the school work, 
and here is the most important consideration of all: they could 
not report upon that vocational work, much as they would have 
liked to, without declaring that the introduction of that work in 
palatial school plants, under conditions that might have been called 
ideal — and certainly were far from real workaday conditions, has 
caused many children to dislike their own homes and hate work. 

In consequence of what, under the circumstances, may be called 
the extreme development of this type of vocational work, an un- 
fortunate situation has now developed there, with a possibility that 
some of the best educators in the country will suffer from the gen- 
eral belief that the work has been overdone, that the city has been 
given "to much of a good thing." Years of experience caused 
the committee mentioned earnestly to recommend that any city 
undertaking to introduce the vocational element into its public 
schools do so with very considerable moderation, and as a modifi- 
cation of its present system rather than a radical overturning. 

I believe this to be somewhat the experience in substantially 
all the cities of the United States, and beyond question in the cities 
of Europe. There were many of these vocational or trade high 
schools having the vocational element as the centre of interest, and 
effort, in Europe, fifteen years ago. There were many less five 
years ago, and a friend of mine, recently returned, found that most 
of those he visited five years ago have now disappeared. 

43 



I wish to emphasize with all the force of which I am possessed, 
the need of at once introducing the vocational element, of intro- 
ducing it in the most practical way possible, and of doing it mostly 
for its cultural effect at decidedly small expense and through the 
employment of exceedingly practical teachers of long and suc- 
cessful experience in the vocations and not necessarily with ex- 
tended pedagogical training, for such training cannot now be se- 
cured iti addition to the other and more necessary qualifications, 
but must be acquired largely along with the instruction in night 
courses, summer courses and where may be, by a ninety days train- 
ing, as now in Boston, where picked men and women from the 
industries are being prepared to teach thousands of pupils in the 
continuation classes to be opened there next September. 

We will be a far happier, nobler, more efficient and godlier 
people when our children in the elementary schools, and more 
especially in the latter years in those schools, are taught the value 
and use of the hands, the use of the fundamental tools of the race 
and the dignity of the occupations that depend upon them. 

All this work, however, is primarily the task of the professional 
educator. Not as he has been, but as he will be shortly when he, 
together with the leaders in all other walks of life, becomes the 
leader that he ought to be and rises to the opportunities and 
responsibilities of the new and wonderful era in which we live. 

True Vocational Education 

True vocational education is, however, a task quite beyond any 
single institution apart from the rest of the world. It calls upon 
all the energies, spiritual, intellectual and physical of all the peo- 
ple in all the walks of life. "We must get a new conception of the 
value and the dignity of the day's work — not, may be, work as 
it is, but certainly of work as it ought to be and as we are about 
to make it. We may not know why Adam was created. May we, 
however, recall the only suggestion that the Bible gives? Imme- 
diately upon his creation he was "put in the garden to dress and 
to keep it." And, when the Infinite One sent into the world a 
part of Himself, The Only Son, He was put, not in the home of 
a teacher, banker or lawyer, but in a carpenter shop where in the 
day's work knowledge and wisdom came unto Him. 

Carlisle says something like this: "All true work is sacred. 
In all true labor, be it but true hand labor, there is something 
Divine." In the impulse of the adolescent child to go to work 
at fourteen, there is, after all, this reaching for the Divine. In 
the poor child's hunger for the world of work and of real things 
is a tiny reflection of that Infinite Spirit that in the seven days 
made the world. 

I would fear beyond measure the present day endeavor in many 
places, and more especially among school teachers, to keep children 
away from work, retard or break this initial impulse, could I think 

44 



that it possibly might succeed. But the older and wiser countries 
of Europe have tried out again and again and in each country, 
all our present speculations in this respect. They let the child 
that is concrete minded and ill fitted to a scholarly life, go to 
work at fourteen but they don't abandon him as we in America 
abandon eighty per cent, of our fourteen-year children and leave 
them half blind and for the most part helpless and uninformed 
to fight their way among and against thoughtless and selfish adults. 
The State goes into the occupation with the child — it is nothing 
less than a social crime that we have committed for tens of years, 
an infinite provincialism, in not taking a similar course. All the 
working places of America must be made in a measure places of 
education. This world exists for the people thereof. The nation, 
the state, the community and all that in them is. The first and 
chief duty is to make men and women, and the wonder of it all 
is, that every development of this principle that is right, that is 
full of the best intelligence and heart of the people, makes for 
all those several and personal profits, comforts and advantages 
which we each of us most desire. It is not socialistic. 



Industry 

I might say that the heavy hand of the State must be laid upon 
industry to this end, but the opposite is true, the heavy hand, the 
hand of ignorance or inconsideration, would blight and destroy it. 
The hand that is laid upon industry must be a hand infinitely 
expert in industry — the hand that knows industry, its every im- 
pulse and symptom as the most skilled diagnostician in the world 
knows his particular kind of ailment — the hand of industry itself. 



Labor 

So, we may say, that the heavy hand of the State must be laid 
upon labor, upon the parents and the children and all others who 
live by their hands, but this hand of the State also is a gentle and 
saving hand for it must be in the main, the hand of labor itself 
laid upon itself and all the intelligence and spirit that labor at its 
best possesses. 

Practical Control 

It is easy to destroy, difficult to build up. The professional 
educator who must always lead in the academic schools knows little 
or nothing of industry. Just as he must lead and be respected 
in his leadership in the school where children are developed in 
their general faculties from the sixth to the fourteenth years, or 
a little later, so he must yield in this other work to the men of 
affairs and for the same reason. He knows the purely academic; 
they know the occupations. Neither can get on without the other, 

45 



each must measurably satisfy the other, but he who knows, in 
either case, must lead. This implies no discredit to the profes- 
sional educator — this is an age of specialization. Men succeed in 
each line of endeavor now, much in proportion as they confine 
their efforts to a mere fraction of the general field, the lawyer to 
marine law or corporation law or criminal law or any one of a 
dozen other branches — never to all. Our colleges are independent, 
our normal schools, our boys' college preparatory schools and, in 
some States, even our high schools, and yet all are correlated and 
affiliated unofficially and as well correlated as those who severally 
direct them find possible. 

This is the European experience, Dr. Kerchensteiner of Munich 
has one Board for general education and another Board for voca- 
tional schools. In Crefeld is a separate Board of nineteen members 
representing all the principal occupations of that city devoted ex- 
clusively and to the limit of its ability to its vocational schools. 
Says Dr. Kerschensteiner : " I could not get along any other way. ' ' 
This separate and practical direction of vocational education is the 
rule throughout Europe except in Russia and England. Our rela- 
tion to these latter countries is suggested by Dr. Kerschensteiner 's 
statement: "Nowhere except in Russia and in England have I 
seen such neglect of childhood as in the United States." 

Those who are responsible for our present schools have been 
utterly unable to control and direct the body of our children after 
the fourteenth year. It is easily done. They must now leave it 
to those who can do it, as it is being done throughout Northern 
Europe, to the men of affairs, the men in the industries, employers 
and employees. 

There should be established in New York City, as well as else- 
where throughout the country, a sub-committee ot the present 
Board of Education, with power, consisting of an equal number 
of those who direct the industries and of those who work in them. 
Or a separate Board appointed by the Board of Education with 
power, not separate in the full sense and as that word has been 
interpreted by many in alarm and anger, but associated and affil- 
iated as a sub-committee would be if only it has power. It must 
have power, otherwise after finding what to do with extreme care 
and consideration, its energies would be wasted and its patience 
exhausted in a vain endeavor to instruct the general Board, now 
and always taxed beyond its strength with its own general and 
especial problems. Furthermore, unless this sub-committee has 
power, there will always be the risk of a single member or a minor- 
ity too impatient or unwilling to work out its problems in its own 
committee, rushing to the general Board with consequent confu- 
sion, bad feeling and inaction. 

The confidence with which many men in public office and else- 
where insist that they be trusted in the management of affairs is 
too often in reverse proportion as thev themselves trust others 
or permit, others to be trusted. New York abounds with employers 

46 



and skilled workingmen and women, so large minded and humani- 
tarian, so tremendously experienced in the needs of the occupa- 
tions and of those who work in them, and of the citizenship of 
this great community, that not one but a dozen committees of five 
or seven could be named, half employers, half workers, and the 
odd man an especially selected educator, the City Superintendent 
for instance. These men could be trusted with the entire problem 
as no other men could be in the world. They will be trusted before 
New York gets right. Those representing employment, backed by 
the authority of the City and State, with ripe experience and broad 
judgment, will make you marvel shortly at what industry is pre- 
pared to do, and the representatives of labor will bring to the 
working people a new appreciation of the day's work with its 
new hopes and opportunities. 



Wisconsin 

This has been done in Wisconsin. There we have a State Board 
especially named, consisting of three especially competent educa- 
tors, three skilled employees and three employers. In every city 
of five thousand people or more, by compulsion of law, the local 
Board of Education has named a Board of Industrial Education, 
consisting of two employers, two employees and the City Superin- 
tendent. By statute the City places at the disposal of this Board 
whatever funds it requires, not exceeding a half mill on the prop- 
erty tax. 

Compulsory Attendance 

Every child in these cities, that is in employment, has a work- 
ing permit issued with care, not simply permitting him to work 
and enabling him after getting that certificate to do whatever he 
will for the rest of his life, but, instead, noting a particular place 
of employment where he must remain or come back to the all-day 
industrial school, or go to another permitted place of employment. 
If he leaves his employer, the employer, under penalty, must notify 
the authorities so that the school and truancy officers may check 
the child and see that these conditions are met. The State of New 
York has what we may call "Local Option." The Board of Edu- 
cation of this City by a simple majority vote can and should re- 
quire the attendance of every child in employment upon the special 
vocational continuation or part-time school for the four hours a 
week noted in the law. New York City has from seventy to ninety 
thousand fourteen- and fifteen-year children out of school, in idle- 
ness or in "dead end" unpromising employment. They are dis- 
regarded, neglected, groping, purblind, fast losing all those spiritual 
values that make men; cheated by their own city of that educa- 
tion which is the birthright and chief inheritance of an American, 
for they are either misfits or unfitted, while education is "the fit- 

47 



ting of the individual to take his place and do his part in the life 
of his time and his community." 

New York is not peculiar in having from seventy to ninety 
thousand of these imperiled youngsters upon her streets. While 
the number is greater, the percentage in proportion to population 
is substantially the same as in the average industrial city through- 
out the country. Think of sixty per cent, of all our children com- 
ing to this untimely end throughout the country in the fourteenth 
year and add to them the great unlettered immigration and say 
whether we are in peril of our institutions and whether any but 
ourselves, adult and responsible, are at fault. 

In the cities of Wisconsin, there isn't a single such neglected 
child, except as he is beyond discovery and learning the vocation 
of artful dodger beyond the ken of the law. I would hesitate greatly 
to commend the Wisconsin experience to you, were it isolated or 
peculiar. It is the experience of hundreds of millions of people 
in the north of Europe. People very like ourselves and from whom 
we come, who send us three-fourths of the men and women who fill 
the commanding places in our factories, as foremen and superin- 
tendents, and do most of the work requiring real skill. And yet, 
our disinherited sons and daughters have a native ability, initiative 
and energy that we sincerely believe makes them naturally superior 
to all others. 

The Utterly Obvious 

It seems exceedingly difficult for an American to do the utterly 
obvious. We see sixty per cent, of our children disinherited, edu- 
cationally, and yet we refuse really to comprehend or notice. If, 
perchance, we do, we say, as did a State Officer of education in 
Philadelphia Saturday, "It would cost too much," when the Wis- 
consin Continuation Schools are deeply touching the lives of all 
working children under sixteen, and of many thousands of older 
people of all ages, at an average cost of not over fifteen dollars 
per year per person. Or, "It's right, but it can't be done," when 
it's the easiest thing that Wisconsin has done in many years. It's 
a positive joy, equally for employers, working men and all who 
are public spirited, happily to conspire in this common effort to 
uplift by the most intelligent processes known to man, the average 
citizenship and every needy individual, not by charities and cor- 
rections, but by the strengthening of the spirit, the intelligence 
and the personal efficiencies. 

No Survey 

A man buried under his work and a year behind needs no im- 
aginative, speculative expert, rushing about, conjuring up things 
that he might do if he had time. New York is forty years, as time 
has gone, behind North of Europe countries in the training for ef- 
fective use of the faculties of her children for the day's work and 

48 



a life of service. Her first duty is to the forty-five thousand that 
she is disinheriting this present month. Her next, to the forty-five 
thousand she disinherited this day a year ago — and so on. She 
wants no new buildings — she had best not bury her feet in brick 
and concrete. Rent lofts in fireproof sanitary buildings, bring 
in the children from all the occupations for a half day during 
sunlit working hours — bring for them teachers chosen directly from 
the occupations to be taught. If you cannot handle 45,000 at once, 
as is probable, make allotments, as Boston is doing under a similar 
law, and get to work with them in September as Boston will do. 
This is simply beginning at the beginning. Your first obligation. 

With the management right, you will be delighted with devel- 
opments. In Milwaukee twenty-three languages are spoken. Her 
condition differs from New York's in little else than size. Begin- 
ning in this way she first taught very few trades. Her schools 
have been open continuously for eighteen months. She now teaches 
all the usual women's occupations and about ten men's trades. In 
September, after a vacation throughout August, she will begin with 
eighteen or twenty men's trades. Nothing is so easy or so natural 
with such a beginning as to add in sequence, as it were, trade after 
trade. Only with such a beginning can trades be taught with 
proper correlation to the general work, so that beginners may rise 
naturally to the more difficult occupations. 

The Higher Beaches 

The foregoing is the kindergarten work, as it were, of voca- 
tional education. Few of us have contemplated the upper reaches. 
Industrially, we have been well described as a nation of stevedores 
bearing down to the ships of the seas the crude and semi-crude 
heritage of the ages, from forest, field and mine, with only enough 
of brains put into the shipment to make it fit for ship's cargo. 
Our captains of industry with marvelous ability are exporting tre- 
mendous quantities, but fifty-six per cent, of our exports of so- 
called manufactured products are of such crude stuff as beef, 
hides, petroleum, crude copper, flour and steel in its rougher forms, 
containing, as I estimate, from five to fifteen per cent, of manu- 
facturing wages. Our imports are the reverse. Mostly the skill 
and brain of foreign workmen and industrial experts and engi- 
neers with only enough material to give their brains expression. 
The very stuff that we send abroad often comes back at ten and 
forty-fold price. 

New York City is and will be the first to feel the effect of bal- 
ancing unskilled native labor with the highly skilled foreign labor. 
Our expert vocational schools must reach as soon as possible from 
the humble beginnings noted to the topmost developments in art 
and science and all places between. The school teacher in the 
vocational school must provide the laboratory and the very latest 
experience and development in any part of the world to the in- 

49 



dustries of his community, under that practical guidance and co- 
operation of those in the industry that assure the heartiest right 
coordination and understanding in all directions. 

In Conclusion 

There is every indication that vocational education as here de- 
scribed, based upon all previous successful human experience, is 
coming in the United States almost immediately. It is being de- 
manded by the representatives of labor and of employment and 
in the common interest. Several cities will begin to do their full 
duty toward their children in September, as all towns in Wiscon- 
sin are endeavoring to do. It seems that New York will not fail. 
Not in this generation has there been such evident opportunity for 
her leaders so to benefit her people. The measure of that benefit 
can only begin to appear when her heretofore disinherited chil- 
dren and adult workers are brought into her schools and in their 
faces is seen the story of their inefficiency, their neglect, their 
hopes and their capacities. 

That story is a wonderful one — I wish I might tell it. When 
you see it in your own city, you will understand all that has been 
said about the shortcomings of the present schools and will see a 
new light, a new hope and confidence, pervading the entire citizen- 
ship. 



Chairman : I believe that the Comptroller was right when he 
said that New York often permits other cities to make experiments 
and then takes the best of what it finds has been done and goes 
forward in achievement here. 

I am not sure that it is always wise to wait for experimentation 
elsewhere, but I am sure it is entirely wise for us to study the best 
that has been done in other places and to make use of it. Gary 
may be an experiment station, but I am sure from what I saw of it 
during the brief time that I was able to spend there on our trip 
west that it is an entirely successful experiment under the guidance 
of Mr. Wirt. We found during our trip west nothing that was 
more interesting than the system that Mr. Wirt has developed 
and established in Gary. We have invited him to come here to- 
night and to tell us again the main features of that system and 
to hear from him the recommendations he can make to us based 
on what he has done and what he has learned in Gary. I have the 
pleasure of presenting to you Mr. William Wirt, of the School 
System of Gary. 



50 



Mr. William Wirt, Superintendent of Schools op Gary, In- 
diana, ADDRESSED THE MEETING AS FOLLOWS: 

Mr. Mayor, President op Board of Education, Ladies and 
Gentlemen : According to many of our critics the only legitimate 
claim that Gary has to fame in its school system is the fact that 
it was visited by Mayor Mitchel. I am sure that the school cities 
visited by the New York party were very appreciative of the cour- 
tesy shown them. But I am sure also that that trip of your Mayor, 
and the President of your Board of Education, and the persons 
that they took along with them, meant a whole lot more to the 
educational welfare of this country than visiting only three cities. 
The fact that the Mayor of New York City would take the time 
to travel a thousand miles to study school problems ; the fact that 
he sacrifices his time here in the city to cooperate with the Board 
of Education in the solution of many of their problems, is a sug- 
gestion to civil officers and authorities everywhere in this country. 
One of the great difficulties with the public school system in the 
past has been that, in the opinion of mayors of cities, the business 
men of cities, the professional men of cities and the industrial 
leaders of cities, any one could teach a school and that a school 
problem existed largely for Fourth of July orators anyhow. To- 
day the school problem is being looked upon from an entirely dif- 
ferent viewpoint. It is no longer a problem for young women 
teaching school, but it is a problem that demands the intelligent 
application of the biggest business men, the biggest officials, the 
largest and brightest professional individuals the community af- 
fords, and I know of no other city that has the opportunity to so 
develop the school system that will make the city a fit place for 
the rearing of children as you have here. 

As I see it the problem is one of cooperation, and with the civil 
authorities and the school authorities cooperating as they are in 
New York City you have an opportunity to do things that many 
other cities don't have. I do not believe that any part of any city 
can solve its social problems alone. I believe that the schools 
should give up the idea that they are a separate entity in the com- 
munity — a separate organization in the municipality. I believe 
that the time is near when every department of our municipal 
housekeeping must work together in harmony with every other 
department and that in effect we will have only one department 
for making our cities the best places possible in which to live. 

What has been done in Gary was not done by Mr. Wirt. Please 
don't forget that. It is not new. We have simply appropriated 
all the old things that we thought were good in New York City 
and everywhere else, and the city authorities, the school authori- 

51 



ties, the church authorities and social workers and all agencies 
in the community have worked together as one department to get 
the thing done. And when I try to show you in as brief a time 
as possible what we have done, please don't misunderstand me. 
We have not solved all the problems of making the cities fit places 
for the rearing of children — fit places for them to live in after 
they have been successfully reared. I know you are more inter- 
ested in learning exactly what somebody else has been able to do 
rather than what he would probably like to do. Gary is a public 
school system of the State of Indiana. It has only the corporate 
powers conferred upon any school corporation by statute. It can 
do only the things that the statute authorizes it to do. We have 
not been able to do many things we would like to have done, but 
we are pleased to know that when you get at it and attempt to 
get the thing done, the statutory limitations, and many of the 
great difficulties we imagine in the way disappear and the problem 
is relatively a simple one. 

I believe that the child must come to the school teacher; the 
child must go into industry, into the profession, and into business, 
intelligent, reliable, industrious, and he must be physically strong 
and reasonably healthy. I do not believe that any teacher can 
teach successfully reading, writing and arithmetic until the child 
has these four attributes; and in the average city the biggest job 
for the public school is to get the child into a condition to be 
taught. The whole problem of rearing children successfully in 
our cities hinges upon these two things : First, providing for a 
sufficient quantity of wholesome self-activity, and second, occupying 
all the child's time. I believe that we must do better than keep 
children busy two and one-half hours a day with the public school 
system. The average system has only 900 hours a year; what are 
the children doing the rest of the time? They are not in their 
homes helping their fathers and mothers. Are they in the churches, 
recreation parks, etc. ? I have not found it so. Never in any city 
have I found more than one child in four going to Sunday school 
regularly. What does that mean ? It means sixty minutes a week 
in Sunday school and for seven days a week it is barely two minutes 
a day. In fact I do not know of any city in this country where 
the child welfare agencies outside of the school including churches, 
public libraries. Young Men's Christian Association, Boy Scouts 
and Camp Fire Girls — all child welfare agencies, are occupying 
the time of the children on the average for ten minutes a day. 
The child on the average in the city is on the street five hours 
a day and the street is a most efficient school for educating him 
in the wrong direction. 

Today we must institutionalize the function of government, we 
must institutionalize the church activities and educational facilities. 
The average family in the average city has thrown upon this public 
institution for the educational work of the family every year more 
and more responsibility. And when it comes to the problem of 

52 



occupying the time of the children for eight hours a day it is not 
at first as easy as it might seem. 

In the beginning you have your teachers to consider. Can 
teachers do any more than they do now ? I doubt it. Many teach- 
ers are going into the hospitals from nervous prostration and the 
strain of the schoolroom duties; and, I believe, that the strain 
that will send a teacher to a hospital with nervous prostration is 
a bad thing for the children in the school. 

All of our children are not anxious to go to school longer hours. 
I was asked a few weeks ago to deliver a lecture at Trenton. Be- 
fore my coming they published some things about the Gary schools. 
A group of boys got together and held an indignation meeting and 
drew up a set of resolutions that read something like this: "We 
don 't take any stock in the Gary schools ; we don 't believe in going 
to school eight hours a day, six days a week; going to school is 
like doing time." 

Last fall a little boy stopped me on the street in Gary and 
asked if I were Mr. Wirt. He then said: "I am a new boy in 
town and expect to start school next Monday." I told him that 
I was glad to learn that he would enter school so promptly and 
hoped that he Avould like the school. "Oh, I will like your schools 
fine, ' ' he replied. ' ' What do you know about the Gary schools ? " "I 
read about them in the paper." "What is there about the Gary 
schools that you hope to like fine." He looked in my face and 
smiled and said : " As far as I can make it out a fellow can take 
a vacation whenever he wants to and I think I will like that fine. ' ' 

Now I believe that the first business of the school is to get the 
child to want to learn the things that the school has to teach. We 
cannot send children to trade schools — we cannot send them into 
industry, into professions or anywhere, unless the child has made 
himself ready, and no industry, no profession or no school can 
take a child that is not industrious, not reliable and not intelligent 
and that is not physically strong and make the man or woman 
that he or she ought to be. To develop these four fundamental 
characteristics is the first job of the public school. I wish to show 
you briefly a type of building that we think in Gary does that 
thing. Here is a school with approximately two thousand children 
in attendance, representing thirty-two nationalities. Last fall four 
hundred of these children could not speak a word of English. We 
have a second Ellis Island in Gary. Here is a school site with a 
building in the centre, public square in front of the building, 
gardens on either side and a playground in the rear, containing 
a quarter of a mile running track, baseball diamond, outdoor gym- 
nasiums, basketball and tennis courts for boys and girls. 

Next to the playground is a swimming pool for boys and men, 
with accommodations for one thousand adult men in addition to 
the school boys. There is a swimming pool for women and girls 
with locker accommodations for one thousand women in addition 
to the school girls. In the building is a branch of the public li- 

53 



brary, all sorts of industrial shops for boys and girls, a nursery 
for babies, nature study conservatories for the care of plants and 
activities that supplement the life of the child in the schools. On 
the first floor above the boys' swimming pool is a gymnasium 51 
by 80 feet. Over the girls' swimming pool another gymnasium 
of the same size, and between the two gymnasiums is the auditor- 
ium stage 55 feet wide and 50 feet deep and 45 feet high with a 
seating capacity in the auditorium of a thousand. These audi- 
toriums are planned as municipal theatres and in this particular 
building last winter this auditorium was filled with children from 
2.30 to 3.30 on Sunday afternoons and with adults from 3.30 to 
5.30. The remainder of the building is given over to the labora- 
tories of a high school, music studios, special classes for foreign lan- 
guages and history and literature and the ordinary academic 
studies of the school. In the building there is accommodated the 
children from the kindergarten, the nursery, the elementary grades, 
grammar grades, high school and two years of college work. 

I believe that such a plant when children can come into the 
building as babies and remain through the kindergarten in the 
first, second and third grades and see about them on every hand 
older boys shoeing horses in the blacksmith shop, the older boys 
doing cabinet, electrical or plumbing work or whatever it may be, 
that as they grow older and come into the higher grades they 
have formed a great many ideas of what they will do in life — 
whether they want to be a lawyer, doctor, industrial chemist or 
whatever it may be. And if they are permitted to grow up in an 
atmosphere of that type and go into laboratories, studios and 
workshops and help the older children in their work, the time will 
come when the boy and the girl will know what he or she is best 
fitted for and will know the thing he or she wants to do. 

I believe it is possible to disappoint these children because 
they do not have the things that the school can teach and that is 
the only thing that will make them want to know the things the 
school has to teach. We often hear an adult say if I only had my 
school days over again I would improve them better than I did. 
Now when we want to educate ourselves we cannot have the op- 
portunity. Can we not do something that will prevent that 
tragedy in the lives of our boys and girls? I think we can. I 
think the thing that makes the adult regret his lost educational 
opportunities is the fact that he is disappointed every day in not 
being able to do the things that he otherwise might do if he had 
properly trained his hand and his brain when he had the oppor- 
tunity. We can disappoint children because they do not have 
the things the school can teach, then they will want what we are 
able to give them. The playground and the workshops in con- 
nection with the school can create within the child the need for 
the things that the school can teach. 

But how are you going to finance a program that provides 
for every child in the city practically the opportunities of a tech- 

54 



nical high school? I do not know how you are going to finance 
a program to take care of children for eight hours a day, six 
days a week and forty-eight weeks in the year when we can 
scarcely finance our present budget for taking care of them five 
hours a day for 200 days in the year. I do not think that com- 
munities can afford things any more than individuals. There is 
a limit to the amount of money we can appropriate for public 
educational purposes just as there is a limit in any family to the 
amount of money they can appropriate for any purpose. When 
we take care of children for eight hours a day, however, we find 
it can be done more cheaply than caring for them only 2% hours 
a day. The reason it is costing so much now for taking care of 
the children 2% hours a day is because your facilities are in use 
only 2% hours a day. When you use these facilities for eight 
hours a day you can occupy the time of your children and you 
will need only about half of your present plant for traditional 
school purposes. Also there is no reason why the schools should 
do it all. 

We do not wish to take children from the home, or from the 
church, or industry, or business. We wish to have every factor 
in the community working together providing a sufficient quan- 
tity of wholesome activities for the children and keeping them out 
of the streets. Here is a program that shows the whole plan 
in operation for eight hours a day. 

(Here a description of the plan of school sessions in Gary was 
given.) 

Sometimes I am asked whether two teachers in a room do not 
confuse the work. In my judgment that is one of the best 
features of the plan. There is no one thing I know more difficult 
to do than to give teachers initiative and responsibility. When 
you place your strong and weak teacher on the same level you 
cannot give more initiative and responsibility to these strong 
teachers than you can t© the weak. We try to select the most ex- 
perienced and the strong teacher as the head teacher and assign 
the weaker teacher as an assistant. The head teacher is paid an 
extra salary. The inexperienced teacher is required to visit the 
strong teacher as frequently as desired. He may visit one hour 
every day. The head teacher is required to observe the work of 
the weak teacher. The weak teacher can consult the head teacher 
and the school authorities can give to this head teacher almost 
unlimited responsibility because he can use^initiative and respon- 
sibility safely. 

I believe that one of the most difficult things in a school system 
is to get supervision and at the same time preserve initiative on 
the part of the workers. School principals as a general rule are 
not successful as supervisors ; they look after the details of ad- 
ministration. There is no reason why you should not have two 
principals in a building accommodating two duplicate schools. 

55 



Select one who has a taste for school management and let him 
manage the building for both schools. The second principal can 
supervise the instruction for both schools. I believe then that 
you will be able to place a great amount of responsibility and 
initiative in each school plant, which is absolutely necessary if 
we are going to get an organization that will make the school an 
institution for meeting the needs of our children. 

A plant of this type with two principals and two corps of 
teachers occupying the same building means that our first invest- 
ment in a school plant is only half what it would otherwise be. 

You have invested in New York City $140,000,000 in your 
sites and buildings. In my judgment you can take care of the 
same number of children that you are now providing for with 
two-thirds of your present equipment and you need many things 
more than new schools. Gary has no more space per child than 
the average city has for playground use. Our capita cost for the 
education of the children in Gary is $40, including instruction and 
operation and maintenance, with an average salary of $1,100 for 
teachers. The general wage schedule is the same as in Chicago, 
which is higher than in New York City. 

I find in New York City that you have $140,000,000 invested 
in your sites, equipment and buildings. You have $31,000,000 
invested in sites, that is, practically $3 out of $14 has gone into 
the school grounds. Now land values are higher in New York 
than any other place in the country. I would say offhand that 
one of the most serious problems in your social welfare work in 
New York is the land problem. Yet you have invested here with 
your tremendous resources and with the tremendous cost of your 
land only $3 out of $14; while Gary, built in a woods during the 
past eight years, has invested in its land $4 out of $14 of its total 
cost of school plant and school equipment. 

I believe that New York City can well afford to put a greater 
amount of its school plant investment in school ground. You 
need not carry fire insurance on it. You need not spend as much 
for janitorial service, operation and maintenance as buildings and 
equipment require. When a building takes care of twice the 
number of children, you have only half the janitorial cost. The 
rooms get swept once every day and the janitors will take care of 
the rooms with two different sets of children using them just as 
easily as with one set using them. You have only half the fuel 
and maintenance cost. You are not through with the expense of 
buildings when they are paid for. They must be kept in repair, 
heated and operated. If there is anything we need to do for 
public school betterment, it is to stop wasting our money. 

We need also to get other people to help take care of our 
children. The schools everywhere are like the old woman who 
lived in a shoe and had so many children she did not know what 
to do. We are overwhelmed with children, thousands upon thou- 
sands, in part-time schools. 

56 



I do not know any reason why a church should not give re- 
ligious instruction to children from 8.30 to 10.30 in the morning. 
The children could go for religious instruction every day in the 
week if the church provides it for them. The children who are 
dismissed at 10.30 might go to their respective churches for re- 
ligious instruction and then to their lunches. Another group 
might go for religious instruction and report for school work 
at 2.30 in the afternoon. The group excused at 2.30 could go from 
school and remain as long as the church wished to keep them. 

Near one of the Gary schools there is a public library. One 
teacher with her forty children are in the children's reading room 
every hour of the day. Every child in the school spends sixty 
minutes in the public library every fourth day. When the chil- 
dren go regularly with their teachers for sixty minutes every 
fourth day they develop a library habit. There is no reason why 
the Young Men's Christian Association should not be running 
every hour of the day and every day of the week. The more 
activities provided for children outside the school, the less 
need be provided in the schools. In New York City there are 
public bath houses, gymnasiums and public libraries adjacent to 
schools. They should help to solve your school problem and they 
should help keep your children busy eight hours a day. 

Why should we teach a child to cook, if her mother will do it ? 
One of the troubles with our modern efforts with social welfare 
work in our cities is the fact that the public school system with 
its compulsory education law takes the child just early enough 
in the morning to prevent anyone else doing anything for it, and 
holds the child just late enough in the afternoon to prevent any- 
one else doing anything for it. Now I believe the public 
school ought to get out of the way of these other child welfare 
agencies. If the parents of children would like them to have 
religious instruction, why not let them go to the church for a 
part of the day? If the mothers would like to have their daugh- 
ters help with the work, why not let them do so ? If the boys can 
help with any activities outside of school, why not let them do so ? 
A school program that is elastic enough for the school to serve 
as a clearing house for the child's activities will go a great way 
towards getting their cooperation. 

I wish to mention just one other phase and I quit. How are 
you to train children to work without any work to do? I think 
it is very fine to teach the love of work to a child, but how are 
you going to do it? Gary has been only an experiment, but it 
was a fortunate place for an experiment, a suburb of Chicago — ■ 
a new city — and with the large corporate interests there it has had 
a good field. Why not make it a practice to call the various men 
in the industries and their superintendents together and ask each 
man present what he finds to be the principal difficulty with the 
men in his employ and the men that he is employing and offer 
suggestions as to what the school might do to help solve the 

57 



problems of these employees and prospective employees. I have 
yet to find out of over a thousand men, foremen and assistant 
superintendents who have stated their problems, more than a very 
few who asked us to put in a machine and to teach the boys how 
to run the factory machine. Invariably these men say if you will 
send us boys and girls out of your schools who are intelligent, 
who are reliable, who are industrious and are strong physically, 
we will try to do our part to teach them the particular work we 
want them to do. The trouble with your school is that these 
children cannot add one-half and one-fourth; they cannot spell, 
write and read. That is easy to understand because the industries 
are recruited from the children who fail in our schools, the chil- 
dren who drop out in the third, fourth and fifth grades. They 
are not able to start in where the employer would like to start 
them and have them grow up in the business. They say that you 
are sending us boys that do not have the foundation for develop- 
ment. If you will simply do your part in building the foundation 
on which we can construct, we will try to do our part. This 
whole problem of industrial education will be solved only through 
the cooperation of the industries and the school. 

The worst place in the world to make the child industrious, 
intelligent and reliable and strong physically is the mechanical 
school-house, with the seats and other devices perfected for keep- 
ing children rigid and quiet. The average boy is a bundle of 
twist, wiggle and squirm and that tendency to twist, wiggle and 
squirm is the starting point in his education, and if you are going 
to make a worker out of him when he is a man you must give him 
a chance to play when he is a boy. 

Fortunately the school is like a large family. There was a 
time a couple of generations ago when there was so much work 
to do in the home that everybody had to help do it, the children, 
the father and mother. In the school there is so much work to 
do, why not let everybody help do it? Why not let the boys do 
your plumbing, help with the electrical work, cabinet work, paint- 
ing, your machine shop work and metal work? Why not let 
them help do the work that must be done? 

I do not know of any reason why the Board of Education 
cannot take charge of its own repair work and elementary con- 
struction work, and by putting a plumber in the school, a cabinet 
worker and a painter, etc., and letting them do their work with the 
children, provide, a sufficient quantity of wholesome industrial edu- 
cation activities at practically no expense. 

If you will take the money that you are now spending for the 
material upkeep of your plants and distribute that money through 
a number of your schools, you will not only keep your school build- 
ings in better repair than now but you will bring to the children 
of those schools industrial opportunities that are worth while. 
Why should the School Board pay the child for doing the work? 
The School Board does not use the fixtures, but the child does. 

58 



The child thinks he is working- for himself. I believe here is the 
opportunity to secure the activities necessary for the development 
of the fundamental principle of industrial education in our school 
system. I believe that if the boy is going to have a love for the 
work, if the boy is going to work effectively when he gets to be 
a man, there must be real work for him to do as a boy and there 
must be a real need for the boy doing the work. 

The average mother will not bother as a rule with her little 
girl who wishes to help with the work of the home because she 
is too much trouble. The mother would rather do the work her- 
self. In a few years when the mother wishes to have the child 
help in this home work, she will not do so because she is not 
qualified to do the work. Now if the mother had had the patience 
to let the child do the work when younger and grow up in the 
habit of doing work I do not think the child would be conscious 
of doing anyilnug out of the ordinary. 

I believe in a school you must start at the age of ten to permit 
boys to work at the ordinary activities. I believe that five years' 
play in the sand pile is enough for any child, but you can transfer 
him then to another sand pile. Here the sand pile is on the floor 
and he takes a pattern and he makes something that can be used 
in the playground or machine shop. Now the child has been 
transformed from the player to the worker and he will take the 
same delight and pleasure in his work in the foundry that he for- 
merly did in his play in the sand pile. 

Last fall a little boy heard some older boys talking about the 
vacation that was coming. He talked to his father and mother a 
great deal about it. "When Thanksgiving did come, after break- 
fast he put on his hat and coat and started out. The father sair), 
"Where are you going?" "I am going to school." "Well, this 
is vacation." "I know this is vacation. I have been waiting for 
it; I am goine* to have a bushel of fun." "But the schools are 
closed." "Why are the schools closed at vacation? How can a 
fellow have fun when the schools are shut up?" That is not 
strange when the closing of the school means the shutting up of 
the swimming pool and the workshop and everything he finds 
pleasure in. The father of this boy ten years old bought him a 
steam engine for a Christmas present and helped him fire it up, 
for he was as anxious as the boy to see it run. The boy said, 
"Daddy, that is a first-class lever. "^ rr " Are there anv other kind of 
levers?" "There are second and third class levers." The boy had 
been working with older boys in the physical laboratory as a 
helper and they had been studying levers. The boy brought the 
engine to school and I called in three boys seventeen years of age 
who had been in Gary a little over a year and during the fall 
had been studying mechanics. I gave them the engine and asked 
them if there was a lever there and after looking it over they said, 
"No, there is no lever there." 

59 



If you permit your boys and girls to run the streets for five 
hours a day until they are fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and seventeen 
years of age and then try to get them in any kind of school to 
develop a scientific attitude of mind, you will have a most difficult 
problem. But if you will take the child who is a natural born 
scientist and permit him to exercise from day to day that scientific 
impulse in his nature, when he gets to be seventeen years of age 
he will recognize a lever if it is on a machine. 

I believe the whole problem of modern industrial education is 
only a part of a larger problem of making the city a fit place for 
bringing up children, but for fear I may be misunderstood I wish 
to place myself on record as in favor of regular trade schools. I 
believe that a state should have an institution like the University 
of Wisconsin that enables every farmer in the state to send to 
the Agricultural Department and get information that will help 
him with his growing crops. 

I believe that every workman in the city, every industry should 
be able to send to the State University and get help in their prob- 
lem. I believe that a university should be universal in its appli- 
cation and in a city like New York you should do for yourselves 
what the University of Wisconsin is doing for the State of Wis- 
consin. 

What would you do with half of your school buildings if you 
doubled np the other half? The entire academic work of New 
York City schools should be accommodated in two-thirds of your 
present plants and, of course, you would pick out for your use 
your most modern and best located plants. What would you do 
with the others? Probably a great many of the others would be 
old buildings. What I Avould like to see is a part of these vacated 
plants us^d for special industrial education schools. The tailors, 
carpenters, plumbers and printers, all should be able to secure the- 
best information that the world affords concerning their work. 
The young man should go to a university for a course in plumbing 
as well as a course in Greek or Latin. I do not see any reason 
why the University of New York should not do for your city what 
the University of Wisconsin is doing for the State of Wisconsin. 
I believe that when you stop wasting your money you will have 
ample funds for this extension work of your University. T would 
like to see the day when the men charged with the industrial work 
of the City will have their offices for getting together in the build- 
ings of the City devoted to industrial educatioii. 

Why would that not be possible for every trade and industry? 
If you are <?oing to get the cooperation between the industry and 
schools I think you must have a place to g p t together. I do not 
see any reason why in this extension work of the University, for 
instance, the plumbing union and the master plumbers should not 
have offices in the plumbing school. The whole problem of making 
the city a fit place for the children is one of cooperation. We are 
spending enough money and energy if we only would work to- 

60 



gether, and the City of New York has relatively more strong men 
and women than any other city in the country. As I take it your 
problem is purely one of not being able to work together and that 
is the problem everywhere. I think you have that problem to a 
greater degree than the average city because you have so many 
people who are capable of bossing the job. 



61 



uffiASy 0F CONGRESS 



019 595 518 9 



